


i've been down the very road you're walking

by megankelly



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-06
Updated: 2013-12-15
Packaged: 2017-11-13 16:15:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 45,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megankelly/pseuds/megankelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Plans don't always work out so well, at least not for Allison Argent and Derek Hale. At first Allison's plan is to kill Derek, but she can't bring herself to go through with it. Quickly, a new plan takes its place--talk to Derek Hale. Allison suspects it might help her process the past few months. Derek's plan? Not to trust or even interact with Allison Argent. Neither gets what they anticipated when they actually strike up a friendship, especially since that friendship is rife with romantic feelings that they have way too many reasons to fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. For The Person Who's About To Kill You

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the lovely song "It's Only Life" by The Shins. Listen for some Dallison feels :)

She remembers her apologies to Scott. Her regret at taking things too far. The screams of Boyd and Erica. Isaac crumpling to the ground. And she’s horrified by all those things, she really is, but sitting in her bedroom she can’t help but thinking she was right about one thing.

Derek still deserves to die for what happened to her mother.

Derek still deserves to die because Allison and her father are alone and broken and maybe she can’t blame all the werewolves in the world but she can still blame him.

So one night, when her father is finally asleep (it’s past four; he’s had trouble falling asleep lately), she gets a cross bow and wolfsbane-tipped arrows from the garage. They are locked in this big cabinet now, and only her dad is supposed to know the combination, since he isn’t sure he can trust Allison with weapons again just yet. Of course, she took it upon herself to find a way to crack the lock—in case of emergencies. She doesn’t exactly live the safest life these days. 

She knows Derek and the pack have been moving around a lot lately—or at least that’s what her father tells her. She thinks he says it to deter her. He must suspect that she’s still up for it—the mission that keeps floating in the back of her mind.

That’s why she’s looked at all the notes, all the maps. Why she’s thought things through. Why she’s asked herself where she would go in Beacon Hills if she was trying to avoid a threat. 

She’s ready to find him.

\--

It’s the eighth place on her list and the sun is coming up behind her and she really thinks this is the most improbable location. Still, there were photos of it on file so she may as well give it a shot.

She breaks into some side door of the Beacon Hills mall, for employees only, and goes down into the basement which is dark and dank. She winds her way through some narrow hallways until she thinks she finds it—just another closet, but with a dent in its door matching the one in the photograph. She puts her ear to the door and swears she hears the low rumble of sleeping werewolves on the other side (though this might be a delusion produced wishful thinking, little sleep, and hours of searching.) She turns the knob. The door is locked as expected. She backs up a little, puts an arrow into her crossbow, and shoots. The arrow burns a hole in the door. Allison hears Derek swearing inside. Then Peter Hale’s voice, amused: “I think we have a visitor.” 

Peter Hale’s voice unnerves her, even though Scott had told her he was back from the dead. 

Derek groans and opens the door. Just like that. And it throws Allison off because you aren’t just supposed to open the door for impending doom. For the person who’s about to kill you. She tries to shake off the feeling of not being taken seriously and menacingly wields her cross bow. 

Derek steps out into the hall and closes the door behind him, even though Peter and Isaac are clearly trying to watch the show. 

“Allison,” he says dryly.

“Jackson might not be a kanima anymore, and Gerard might’ve been in the wrong, but…but you are still the reason my mom is dead.” 

He just stares at her.

“My mom is dead because of you,” Allison says, as if that will help it sink in. 

“Your mom is dead by her own choice. Because of your hunter’s code.”

“You bit her,” Allison says, “and I’m not letting you live.” 

“I get that you think killing will make it feel better. I won’t lie to you. It might. But it doesn’t-”

“Bring my mother back? I know that. Scott told me all about how you talked down to him, Derek, but I’m not taking any of that. I’m not a child.”

“I agree. But I would rather talk down to you than the alternative.”

Allison cocks her head to the side. “Which would be?”

“Fighting you.” His eyes flash red.

“Well, that’s what I pick,” she says, with unflinching resolve, jaw clenched. Yet she’s not making a move. Not about to shoot an arrow. Not reaching towards the dagger tucked in her belt. Not grabbing at the taser in her pocket. 

And he’s not making a move either. 

Which annoys her. Because she is a threat. And from what she knows about Derek Hale, he’s all about eliminating threats.

It also annoys her that she has a clear idea of how Derek should be reacting, yet doesn’t know, really, what she should be doing herself. She doesn’t know what she’s capable of anymore. She wouldn’t have thought she could’ve kept shooting at Boyd like that, but she had. And she thought killing Derek Hale was what she wanted, but he’s just standing there, staring at her, and though she hates him, though she wants him dead, she doesn’t particularly want to kill him right now.

“Go home, Allison,” he says, then turns back towards the door.

Then she’s tasing him, and her hand is steady, and he crumples, falls to the ground. And she keeps tasing, and he’s writhing, and she knows she could do it. Kill him. But instead she finds herself barking at him, as if it had been her plan all along: “You’re going to tell me.”

There’s fear in his eyes. She wants to think that’s better than when he was looking at her so indifferently, but it really isn’t. 

She drops the hand holding the taser to her side.

“Tell me why.”

He gasps for breath. “You—Allison, you don’t want to know.”

“I’ll do it,” she says. “I’ll kill you. Now tell me why you would bite her.”

The fear is gone from his eyes, and now he’s glaring at her. “She was going to kill Scott.” 

That takes the breath right out of her. She’s been doing such a good job at misremembering her mother—at glossing over the cold, impenetrable side, those moments where she absolutely terrified her. It takes the breath from her because she loves Scott and she’s furious that her mother would try anything like that and she doesn’t want to be furious with her. 

“No, she wouldn’t.”

“I can hear you,” Derek says. “Lying to yourself.”

“Don’t!” Allison snaps. “Don’t do that to me.” It’s one thing for Scott to read her emotions like that—and even then she doesn’t like it. But it just feels like a violation for Derek to do it, of all people. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. 

Then she opens them and continues: “You could’ve protected Scott and done something else. You’re an Alpha, aren’t you?”

“When one of your own is in danger-”

“Scott isn’t one of yours,” Allison says, practically spitting. “He never was.”

Derek looks genuinely hurt by that but he continues: “When one of your own is in danger, you don’t think. You act. On instinct.”

“You knew they’d kill her if she was bitten. You knew that.”

“I did,” he says, matter-of-factly. “But that’s not why I bit her. I was trying my best to protect Scott.” The effects of the taser have worn off, and Derek is now sitting up against the door. There’s strength to his voice again. “And I’m not going to apologize.”

Allison remembers Kate’s breathy apology to Peter Hale. She imagines, ever so briefly, exacting that type of apology from Derek. But she knows it wouldn’t mean anything. And she doesn’t want it. 

She isn’t sure what she wants.

“I’m not going to kill you,” she states, sort of dully.

“Good,” Derek says.

“You didn’t just say that about my mother killing Scott so I’d let you live, did you?” Allison scratches at the back of her neck with one hand.

“No.”

“Okay then.” 

Allison decides she might as well walk away now since nothing happened how she planned it and she doesn’t see anything else coming from this, but Derek says her name before she can get too far. 

She turns back. He’s on his feet again, looking all strong and Alpha-like. 

“I lost my family.”

Allison sharply sucks in a breath. She doesn’t want to hear about this. She doesn’t want to hear about what Kate did. She knows about it. She knows what her aunt did. She knows it, and it terrifies her, and she wants to condemn her for it but she loves her so much still, and, really, who knows anymore? After the past few weeks…Maybe Allison could do the same thing herself, if she was in the right frame of mind. 

But then Derek doesn’t say anything to rip her to shreds. 

He just says, “I know that it sucks,” and his voice is surprisingly soft. 

Then he walks back to that little supplies closet that is apparently his new hide-out (though she’s guessing that’s going to change now that she’s found it), leaving her standing there, blinking and unsure about what just happened.


	2. Just The One To Talk To

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allison cuts in before he can threaten to rip off any of her limbs. “Doesn’t it get exhausting? Being like this all the time?”
> 
> She’s already exhausted from grief and anger, and it hasn’t been six plus years, like it’s been for Derek.

The next week continues as normal. She goes to school. She talks shallowly with Lydia, who is reeling from her own issues. She avoids Scott in the hallways. She smiles awkwardly at Stiles. She has quiet dinners with her dad. She goes on runs through the woods, stopping in front of the burned remains of the Hale House and letting herself, just for a second, feel the weight of it all—the weight of Kate being gone, the weight of the blood on her hands, the weight Derek must feel constantly—before zipping off again.

Her father suggests she talk to someone about everything that’s happened. He says he’s not so sure anymore that this hunting thing is good for her. He says that usually he would just tell her to be strong but that this is beyond that type of advice. 

Allison knows he’s right. And she wants to talk about everything, she really does. But talking about it seems sort of…weak. 

Him urging her to do it, though—well, maybe that’s the permission she needs. The excuse. Although she has no intention of approaching who he wants her to go to, the guidance counselor, Ms. Morrell. 

She goes to everyone else—or she tries at least. She never manages to make it to Scott’s front door. Instead she ends up crying parked in front of his house. It seems wrong to go to him when they’re broken up, but that’s not why she’s really crying. She’s crying because she doesn’t want to talk to him, even though she should. Scott is so good—pure—and she doesn’t think he’ll get it. All that rage coursing inside her, all that sadness. How it’s driven her to do heinous things. How she could maybe see it doing the same thing again. He’ll accept her, sure, but he’ll gloss over the darkness. He’ll pin it all on Gerard but she knows it’s in her. She tries to drop hints with Lydia about needing to have a serious conversation but Lydia seems more determined than ever to keep things at a surface-level. She steers their chatter back to school, back to Scott, back to that hideous outfit in Allison’s closet. Allison knows this means Lydia’s hurting, so she decides not to burden her. She even goes to Stiles because he’s lost a parent too and so it should be the same, right? But she only makes it a few minutes into the conversation. Stiles thinks of his mom as some sort of angel, and though Allison thinks that’s nice and all, Stiles’s mother and her death—sick, in a hospital room, so human—seem foreign. Nothing like losing your morally ambiguous, somewhat frightening family members from a slash of a werewolf’s claw or suicide prompted by a werewolf bite. She even attempts to talk to Jackson, remembering how she once thought he had confidante potential. But Jackson gets all fidgety at the mention of death and she can see all the guilt in his eyes and she can’t bear to dredge up everything he went through the past few months. 

The last place she goes is the Hale house.

Allison is smart enough to get that this is where everything started. Everything these past few months can be traced back here—back to what Kate did. If there had been no fire, Peter Hale wouldn’t have bit Scott, Peter wouldn’t have killed Derek’s sister, and Peter wouldn’t have killed Kate. If there had been no fire, Derek wouldn’t have killed Peter, Peter wouldn’t have possessed Lydia, and Lydia wouldn’t have unknowingly resurrected the guy. If there had been no fire, Derek wouldn’t have bit Jackson or Erica or Boyd, and there would have been no kanima, and her mother wouldn’t have tried to kill Scott and Derek wouldn’t have bbitten her and she wouldn’t have died. If there had been no fire, Gerard wouldn’t have come to Beacon Hills, wouldn’t have used her, wouldn’t have died. 

Without this fire, Allison probably wouldn’t be in Beacon Hills at all.

She enters the Hale House and stands right in the middle of it, surrounded by its sad, charred walls. She remembers what Kate said. Allison had thought Derek was a murderer then (She still isn’t sure that he couldn’t be, to be honest.) and Kate had pointed out what living in a place like this could do to someone. Allison closes her eyes and imagines flames rising up around her. Imagines screams. 

She doesn’t know why she thinks this will help, why this seems like a suitable alternative to talking over her feelings.

Except, it’s one thing she’s avoided imagining in all of this. A box in her mind that she’s been fighting to keep closed. And maybe if she opens it—maybe that will help somehow. 

And then there are tears pricking her eyes and she’s thinking it won’t help at all. 

When she opens them, Derek is there, looming in the doorway.

“What are you doing here?” Derek says. It sounds more like a threat than a question. 

“Uh, nothing. I’ll leave.”

It’s almost inhuman how quickly he’s right there, inches in front of her face, and then she remembers—oh yeah, it actually is inhuman. But she doesn’t have much time to think about that because he is leaning over her and grabbing her by the arm and saying, “What are you doing here, Allison?” 

“I—I—” Allison looks at her bag lying against the wall across from them. She’s going to have to tell her dad this “no weapons” thing really isn’t working out for her—though she’s not too keen on telling him she ran into Derek because she was just chilling in the Hale house. She could try to flip Derek over but this isn’t like that time with Matt; he’s an Alpha and a lot stronger than her. “I just wanted to look around.”

He looks at her skeptically but lets go of her arm. His motion is rough, and she’s relieved she’s able to keep her balance. 

“Don’t come here,” he says.

She wants to scurry past him, grab her bag, and go. This was clearly a bad idea. But then she remembers that she could’ve killed Derek and he’s suddenly less scary. And okay, maybe she remembers the way his voice sounded when he said losing family sucks. And maybe she is imagining (how old would he have been? seventeen maybe?) young Derek looking at this house right after the fire had happened. Almost everything taken from him—by her family. 

“I didn’t think you’d be here,” she says, attempting to keep her voice steady. “Weren’t you in hiding?”

“I’m not in hiding all the time,” he snaps.

“Oh. Well. That’s good,” Allison says. “Uh, do you come back here often?”

“What are you trying to do?”

“I just—making conversation.” She waves her hand through the air. 

He stares at her. She takes a step backwards, and he steps towards her, growling, “Get out.”

“Okay, okay.” 

She walks around him, leaving feet of space between them, as she goes for her bag. She slides it onto her shoulder, then looks back at Derek, who is examining her much more warily than he had when she’d threatened his life. It does sort of make sense, Allison realizes. It has to be the sight of her. An Argent. In this place.

“You know, before Peter killed Kate, she said sorry. I mean, he kind of made her. And he said it didn’t sound very sincere, but you never know, right? And…I don’t really know if that means anything to you, but, well, she said it.”

Allison does her best to look directly at Derek, who has this sadness in his eyes that is so clear and raw and whose jaw is clenched even tighter than it already was. She ends up looking away, not because she’s uncomfortable (though she is), but because it seems like a kindness. 

She’s staring at the ground when she adds: “I know she may not have meant it, so…I’m sorry. For her. Take it as a sorry from my family. That she did this. And, um, just pass along my apologies to Isaac and Boyd and Erica. That I did what I did. Okay?”

She doesn’t look up to see how Derek is reacting, but she feels a little better. Admitting that what Kate did was wrong and apologizing for how it’s wrecked his life, letting Derek know she’s sorry for how he treated his betas—maybe that’s what she needed all along. Apologizing to Scott had done little to take that massive weight off her chest. Now she is halfway out the door and feeling a little lighter. 

Then Derek says, “But not for tasing me?

She turns around. “The jury is still out on that one, but personally, I think you got off pretty lucky.” 

He rolls his eyes, as if there was really no way she would have been able to kill him, but she doesn’t care because she knows she could have. Even if she didn’t. And she knows he could’ve killed her too—so many times, just now even. And he hasn’t. 

Which is something she’s never stopped to really think about before.

The realization must show on her face because he’s looking at her with even more skepticism, which she thought was impossible.

She should really just go.

She knows that.

She isn’t quite sure why she hasn’t.

Except that suspicion she doesn’t want to name—the suspicion that Derek Hale could be just the one to talk to, the one who could understand. The person who could get her grief. Who could get what it’s like to make bad choices, to do something you thought you couldn’t (and that you probably—no, definitely—shouldn’t.) She’s been shooting down the idea as silly. He hates her family. He hates her. And she—well, she doesn’t exactly consider him her favorite person.

Allison shifts her weight from foot to foot.

“So, uh, you’ll tell Isaac and Erica and Boyd, right?”

“Erica and Boyd left,” he says, in a tone that’s more resigned than angry. 

“What? I mean, I thought when my dad let them go that they would’ve went back to you.” 

“Your dad?”

“Yeah, they—I thought Stiles would’ve told you. We caught them. Uh, my dad and I. And my dad let them go before he went to help with Jackson.” 

“And your dad didn’t think he should mention to me that he had my betas?” Derek is practically roaring now and it makes him seem taller. She pictures him in his wolf form towering over her. Scott as a wolf is actually kind of cute, when he has control over it; Derek as a wolf looks more animal, more vicious. 

“Hey,” Allison says, crossing her arms. “My dad let them go, okay? You thought they ran away. They just…ended up a little delayed.”

“I thought they had gotten away on time,” he says, looking down. 

He’s talking more to himself than her at this point, but she says, “On time?” 

He doesn’t say anything.

“Before…whatever you’re hiding from got here?”

Again, he’s silent and glaring, and that glare reads, You’re the most annoying thing to ever grace this universe. She would think this was a special glare that she’s earned, if she hadn’t heard Stiles and Scott talk about it so many times. 

“I’m not trying to team up with it or anything. I just…the look on your face says something is wrong, and if I can help in any way with Boyd and Erica, then I will. If us keeping them caused this, I…I’ll help.”

“I don’t need help,” he says. 

Allison finds this weirdly endearing because he says it in this grumpy but not furious way, and he looks sad and helpless and she wants to feed him soup or something. After a moment, though, she thinks he’s stubborn and reckless and should put his prejudice aside if it means helping the people that are his responsibility—the teenagers that he turned. 

“And if you continue snooping around here,” Derek continues, switching from vulnerability to anger, “I’m going to-”

Allison cuts in before he can threaten to rip off any of her limbs. “Doesn’t it get exhausting? Being like this all the time?” 

She’s already exhausted from grief and anger, and it hasn’t been six plus years, like it’s been for Derek. Again, she thinks of Derek in a new light, if only for a few seconds. How bleak that must be—how hard—to carry around those emotions for so long. She wonders when his last genuine laugh was, his last genuine smile. She doesn’t ask the same questions of herself; the answer, while probably nowhere near as long as Derek’s, would scare her. 

“Being like what?”

“Derek-y. All threatening and angry. You can’t possibly be like this all the time. You have to, like, go home…or to your closet thing…and be someone else. You have to, like, have a goldfish or read poetry or listen to Lady Gaga or something.”

“I do not listen to Lady Gaga. And what are you trying to do right now, Allison? Get to know me?” 

“What if I was?” Allison stares at him straight-on, defiant. 

“What are you expecting? For me to come over to the Argent house for dinner and play Boggle with you and your dad?”

Allison tries not to get distracted by the mental image of Derek playing Boggle.

“You’re making it sound like we’re the Montagues and the Capulets! It’s-”

“Worse,” Derek supplies. “A lot worse than the Montagues and the Capulets. Probably about a million times worse.”

“Okay, maybe, but….well, we don’t exactly have tons of Montagues and Capulets around anymore to keep the feud alive. And it’s not like my dad even hates you, Derek. I know he doesn’t. He doesn’t hate werewolves and he doesn’t hate you. And I—” Allison doesn’t let herself go there because it’s too embarrassing, to say she doesn’t hate him, that she had hated him and just…something about talking to him had made her let it go. 

“You really want me to come over to your house and play Boggle,” he says, incredulous.

“No,” Allison says. “No. I just…is it so bad if I want to talk to you?”

Derek has no snarky remark. He actually looks stunned. Which is satisfying, in some ways, being the one to stun him. But also annoying because Allison really wants him to tell her that she’s not crazy to look to him for understanding, for closure, for something, even though every logical thought tells her she is. 

The silence is heavy, and she is about to leave when he says it: “I don’t trust you.” His tone is level and controlled, even more than usual. 

“Yeah. Well. I don’t trust you either.” 

Then she turns around and struts out of the Hale house.


	3. Maybe Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s closing her eyes, trying to ward off the tears, when suddenly there is a hand around her bicep and she’s being yanked. She opens her eyes, expecting, from the strength, Jackson or Scott, but then it’s Derek Hale and they are in a cupboard filled with janitor supplies.
> 
> “Not cool,” she says, pushing his hand off her arm. “What do you want, Derek?”
> 
> He almost looks a little bit embarrassed as he takes a step backward, giving her space.

Two weeks later Boyd and Erica are back at school in time for the final weeks of classes, looking dead behind the eyes. Allison watches them, hoping to be able to tell what happened. She can tell it was traumatic. Boyd and Erica are always together, always holding hands, but they’re too sad-looking for it to be cute. Allison can tell, no matter what Boyd and Erica may feel for each other, the reason they’re together all the time is because they’re terrified. 

Isaac comes back to school on the same day. Allison assumes that this means he, Derek, and Peter are out of hiding. Isaac is usually hovering near Boyd and Erica, looking anxious. 

Sometimes Allison sees them all together—Boyd, Erica, Isaac, Stiles, and Scott. She assumes it’s only a matter of time until Jackson joins them, which makes her more grateful than ever that she has Lydia. 

Allison thinks about asking Scott what happened and how Boyd and Erica are, but things with Scott have gone from bad to worse. He can’t handle her as anything less than a girlfriend, and whenever she says as much as a word to him, he looks at her with these intense, lovesick eyes that make her feel guilty. 

Allison sometimes considers going directly to Boyd and Erica and asking if Derek told them she was sorry. She wants to tell them herself. She wants to do something for them. But neither of them ever looks at her when they pass each other in the halls. One time, Boyd almost falls into a locker avoiding eye contact. Allison thinks that apologizing face-to-face would be more for her benefit than theirs so she leaves them alone; they deserve that much.

Isaac, Erica, and Boyd have only been back for a week when Allison thinks this is going to be too much for her. 

She’s sitting in the cafeteria with Lydia and Jackson who are all cuddled up together on one chair and talking about what they’re doing this weekend. Jackson says they should stay in, be low-key, “to avoid Derek,” and Lydia agrees. 

“Um, Derek?” Allison says.

“The creep’s been tailing me everywhere,” Jackson says. “Lydia, if I’m following around high schoolers begging them to play fetch with me when I’m his age, just kill me. Also. If I look that stupid in leather.”

“Hon, he kind of rocks that leather jacket, sorry to say.”

“Are you kidding me?” Jackson says. “I have legitimately seen blood stains on that thing, it makes him look like a serial killer, and he probably bought it in some bargain bin anyway.”

“He drives a Camaro,” Lydia points out.

“Whatever,” Jackson says, pouting. 

“So you’re not thinking about…?” Allison’s voice trails off.

“Joining him? You’re kidding me. No way.” 

“You know, you can go to Scott. If you need anything,” Allison says. 

“Yeah, because I really want to go to McCall for advice. I can handle it.” 

They had already been holding hands, but Allison notes that Lydia’s thumb is now rubbing circles on Jackson’s hand in this very tender way. It makes Allison feel lonely. 

“Anyway, McCall has his hands full with his little band of misfits,” Jackson says, gesturing to their lunch table. Even he can’t talk about them with much disdain, though Allison is sure he’s trying. 

Usually Allison does all she can not to look at them too long because she doesn’t want to seem invasive, but her eyes follow Jackson’s to the full table. To Erica and Boyd and their intertwined hands, their matching worn-out expressions. To Stiles’s wild gesticulations, in attempts to entertain, she’s guessing. To Isaac’s eyes shiftily looking over at Boyd and Erica every few seconds. To Scott who is picking at his food half heartedly. 

Then she and Erica lock eyes for the first time since Erica’s been back at school.

Even though Allison doesn’t have any werewolf powers, she can practically feel Erica’s heart beat quickening. Erica is looking at her exactly as she had out there in the woods—eyes wide and terrified. This time, though, Allison’s eyes are the ones pleading. Pleading for Erica not to be so afraid, to accept that she’s sorry for what she did, that she’s sorry for whatever it was that happened to them. Erica looks away and buries her face into Boyd’s shoulder. Boyd pets her hair. The entire table sees, then, that Allison is the cause of it. They look at her, horrified. Even Scott shakes his head a little. 

Allison wishes she had a shoulder to hide her face in. 

Lydia abandons Jackson’s hand for a second to snatch Allison’s. “Look at me,” she demands. Allison turns away from the table. “Do you need to talk? Because I know I’ve been…whatever lately. But we can talk.”

Which makes Allison feel even worse because she never did the same for Lydia, even after Peter attacked her. Her whole life became the kanima and hunter training and relationship issues with Scott, and she hadn’t even offered to be there for Lydia. She had thought the less Lydia had to do with Allison and everything that was happening, the more it would protect her. 

“I…I need to go.” 

Allison takes her hand back and walks out of the cafeteria, taking deep breaths. She walks down the empty hallway, wondering where to go. The bathroom feels too cliché because what if she starts crying and then she’ll be one of those girls crying in a bathroom stall at lunch and the thought is just too gross and sad for her. She decides to pace the hallway instead because at least the feeling of being in public (even though she is utterly alone) should keep the tears at bay.

No such luck.

She’s closing her eyes, trying to ward off the tears, when suddenly there is a hand around her bicep and she’s being yanked. She opens her eyes, expecting, from the strength, Jackson or Scott, but then it’s Derek Hale and they are in a cupboard filled with janitor supplies.

“Not cool,” she says, pushing his hand off her arm. “What do you want, Derek?”

He almost looks a little bit embarrassed as he takes a step backward, giving her space. He’s about to start talking when she adds: “No, you know what. We need to have a little talk about physical boundaries because you can’t just do that to people. You can’t just pop up and pull teenage girls into closets. People go to jail for that. Okay? And you can’t stalk Jackson. And-”

“I get it,” Derek says gruffly.

“I don’t think you actually do,” she says, leaning against the door. “Okay, what do you want?” 

“Did you get your dad to help?”

“Huh?”

“Did. You. Get. Your. Dad. To. Help?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh,” Derek says, “well, that’s all.” And he moves to walk past her.

“What? No. That is not all! You just pulled me into a closet. That is not a singular-yes-or-no question type of thing. What did my dad help you with?” Derek doesn’t say anything. “With Boyd and Erica?” Again, he doesn’t say anything; Allison takes that as confirmation. “With whatever had you in hiding?” Again, he gives her nothing.

“I wish he would’ve told me,” Allison says. “I wanted to help too.”

“It’s good you stayed out of it,” Derek says.

“Says the guy who brought three innocent teenagers into it.”

“Well, maybe I just don’t want to do any more damage than I have already.”

“I can take care of myself.”

He does something that sounds a little bit like a laugh. It’s definitely bitter, whatever it is. “I don’t doubt that, Allison. You’re a hunter.”

“I’m not—” She stops because she can’t really say that, can she? That she isn’t a hunter? After everything she did? She honestly doesn’t know if she’ll be a hunter down the line. Her father thinks it’s best to put her training on pause, to forget the hunting side of things for a while and attempt to cope as a normal teenage girl—for them to be, as much as they can, a normal family. And Allison—though she resents weapons being locked away from her, though she resents being left out of whatever secret mission her father had helped Derek with—is a bit relieved to be taking a step back from hunting. It’s not even the danger that scares her. It’s the decisions that do.

He looks at her knowingly, and it unnerves her.

“What are you really here for, Derek? What does it matter if I told my dad to help you or not?”

“I was just—it’s nothing. Your father just—he helped us a lot, I guess. Without him, well, without him I don’t know if Boyd and Erica would be alive right now. And I know that the Alpha Pack would still be breathing down my neck. And it’s not like I can thank him. So.”

“You wanted to thank me?”

He glowers at her which she takes as a yes.

“I’ll pass it along when I yell at him for excluding me from things.”

Derek groans. 

“Is that all?” Allison says. “Because I’m not buying that being everything.”

He sighs and makes a squinty expression with his eyes. “I was thinking. About what you said. Maybe now it would be—uh, alright.”

“Maybe now what would be alright?” she says. She has a feeling she knows what he means, but she wants to make him say it.

“Talking.”

“We’re already talking.”

He scowls. “You know what I mean.”

Allison smirks. “I would really enjoy you spelling it out for me.”

“Mall basement, 1 a.m., same closet, tonight.” 

“I thought you were out of hiding.”

“Well, some things need to stay hidden,” he says.

Which she agrees with—she couldn’t imagine strolling into the pack lair, Erica and Isaac and Boyd all sprawled out on couches and carpets (Would the place even have furniture? Allison makes a mental note to look at family research on pack lairs.) when she comes to talk to Derek. 

“And you’re not going to murder me?”

“I could ask the same of you.”

“You’re not going to make me any promise of not killing me, are you?”

He shrugs.

“Well, I’m bringing a crossbow.” 

“Wouldn’t expect anything less.” 

He moves to go past her again. 

“Wait,” Allison says. “Did you tell Erica and Boyd and Isaac because-”

“Tonight,” he says, not even looking at her.

Which is annoying because she needs to know that they know. She can’t take seeing them and being unsure. But the answer also gives her just a little bit of a thrill, which she finds a little concerning. 

She heads back to the cafeteria, trying not to glance back at him and his black leather jacket as he leaves the school

By the way, she agrees with Lydia. He rocks it.


	4. It's Not That Hard to Imagine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Nobody knows an Alpha better than their betas.”
> 
> “Nobody knows Derek,” Allison responds, without skipping a beat.
> 
> Her father looks at her with more than just a hint of suspicion. “That’s a weird thing to say.”

Allison thinks about asking her father what happened with Boyd and Erica but she doesn’t want to explain why she knows he helped, and he certainly doesn’t want him prying into anything about Derek. Instead she decides to convince her father that he should go to bed early. 

“You look a little pale, Dad. And I know you haven’t been getting enough sleep lately,” she says, as they both pick at the pasta he made them.

“It’s not so easy,” he admits. And she knows that he’s not talking about sleep. This is uncharacteristically open, and it makes her uneasy. 

She reaches over and grabs her father’s hand. “I know, Dad.” 

“It’s inevitable for everyone, but when you’re a hunter or a werewolf, it’s always around the corner. Loss. Sometimes you’re on the receiving end, and sometimes you’re dealing it out. And you can be a hunter for a long, long time, like I have, and you never get used to it—unless you let yourself get cold.”

Allison forgets about sneaking out to meet with Derek. Her hand shakes as she brings her glass to her lips, takes a sip of the water. She swallows. “Do you wish that you, uh, could? Be cold?”

“Some people would say I am already,” Argent says, smiling half-heartedly.

“No, they wouldn’t.”

He sighs. “I wouldn’t either. But no, Allison, I don’t. Though I think it might be easier than what’s actually happening—than getting softer.” 

“What does that mean?”

He looks at her thoughtfully, as if he’s not sure if he should proceed with something so personal. He gulps and goes forward: “My teenage rebellion’s gotten here a little late. Growing up, I thought my father had all the answers. He was a superhero. He was protecting people. He had principles. At least I thought he did. And now…I don’t know if ever was that person.” 

“Rebellion? Are you saying you aren’t sure if you want to be a hunter?”

“No. That’s....that’s me. That’s who I am.” 

“You don’t sound so sure.”

“Being a hunter might…maybe it might mean something a bit different than I had thought. But it’s who I am.”

“And it’s who I am,” Allison says tentatively—more of a question than a statement.

“Allison,” he says, very fiercely. “It doesn’t have to be.”

“But I’m good at it, aren’t I?”

“I’m sticking by what I said, about waiting a while, but I can start training you again. If you want. You can be good at it. Fiercely good at it, even. But-” 

“And I know things. Didn’t you say we have a responsibility to-”

“Things have changed. You have a responsibility to go to school, be a teenage girl, get good grades, figure out what it is you want. And if that is to be a hunter, that’s great. We’ll figure out what that means—together. But I’m giving you the option I never had, the option a lot of Argents never have. If you don’t want to be a hunter, I understand. And you know, that might be great too.” 

“I don’t get it,” Allison says. “What’s changed?” 

“There are costs,” he says. “Which isn’t something new. I’ve always seen them. Always paid them. But it’s the first time I’ve seen you really start having to pay them too. What you went through with Gerard—that was too high of a cost.”

“But Gerard isn’t around.”

“Gerard wasn’t the one who took you to go capture your classmates.”

“Dad.”

“I’m not sorry for my work, Allison. I just…I think it’s okay if it’s not yours.” 

“It would be easier for me if you just said I had to be a hunter.” 

He sighs. “I know.”

“And after everything I’ve seen, how could I just live a normal life? I can’t go around pretending there aren’t werewolves. I’ve seen them. I’ve known them.”

“And as someone who’s seen them and known them…what is it you think you should be doing?” 

“I don’t know. I just—I know there can’t just be one response. Werewolves aren’t just one big group that’s all the same. They’re—they’re people. They’re all different.” She thinks of Scott and Derek. It used to be her go-to example, mentally, of just how different werewolves could be. It still is but now she is surprised to find herself thinking of differences in demeanor, personalities, pasts—not Derek as bad and Scott as good. Has she really upgraded Derek from bad to ambiguous? She’s not sure if she likes that. 

“We hunt those who hunt us,” Argent says, a bit wistfully. “The Code.”

“But even with the Code, it’s still so…us versus them. Werewolves versus hunters.”

“I know,” Argent says.

“Is that inevitable?”

Argent hesitates. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t think there’s room for…alliances? Cooperation?” She knows she’s treading dangerously close to asking about Erica and Boyd, but she has to know. Was joining with Derek a one-time thing or could it be the start of a new partnership? It certainly seems to have had an impact on Derek, since he’s willing to talk to her.

“It’s tricky. There’s a lot of bad feelings between everyone, considering….everything.”

“But what if there were people who were willing to bridge that gap? What if we all set aside our fear and mistrust and hurt, just for a few seconds, and walked over to that other side? What if we tried to understand? What it’s like to be a werewolf—it’s not that hard to imagine, Dad. It’s not that hard to imagine why they make the choices they do, right? Even the choices that have hurt us the most. And if we can get them to see that we care about the same things—about the survival of our families, about safety, about-”

“Are you suggesting werewolf and hunter ambassadors?” 

Allison shrugs, only a little bit embarrassed. “You asked me what I thought.” 

“I don’t know how you can be such an idealist. After everything.”

“I don’t want to be cold inside,” Allison says. 

This is the first time she’s ever said that sentence. She realizes that she means it. She hates being weak. She hates grief. She hates fear. But she does not want to be cold inside, no matter how tempting. She wants to be, on some level, the girl that she was when she came to Beacon Hills, that girl who was warm and optimistic and romantic. 

Her father is staring at her, as if he’s trying to figure her out. 

“Come on, you worked with werewolves when we were dealing with the kanima,” Allison says. “Can’t you see it happening again?”

He sighs. “You know, don’t you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Who told you? Scott?”

Allison smiles. “Okay, you caught me.” 

“The situation called for it. It’s not a permanent partnership by any means.” 

“And what was the situation exactly?”

“An Alpha pack.”

His voice is more business-like than it has been the whole conversation thus far, with just a hint of resignation. Allison feels a little bit triumphant about that; he should’ve known better than to keep this from her—especially when all they have is each other. 

“An Alpha pack?”

“Yes, a pack of Alphas.”

“How is that possible? The whole point of an Alpha is to be in charge of other wolves, right?”

“That’s what makes the Alpha pack so dangerous. It’s not how a pack is naturally formed. I don’t know all the logistics behind it, this is the only one of its type that we’ve known about for decades, but I do know that they don’t keep each other in check. In a normal pack, an Alpha can usually keep things under control. A bunch of Alphas—they’re reckless. They feed into each other’s worst natures.”

“What did they want here? They were the ones that had Boyd and Erica, right?”

“They knew Derek was vulnerable as an Alpha. He’s young, inexperienced, grieving. And any sort of pack he had was bound to be just as inexperienced. He was an easy target.”

“To kill?”

“To recruit.” 

“But why? Why would they want him?” 

“The Alpha pack has a lot of enemies.”

“More than Derek?”

Her father laughs. “Yes. A lot more. Bigger numbers help them.” 

“So if they wanted Derek, what were they using Boyd and Erica for? What did they do with them?”

“Nobody knows an Alpha better than their betas.”

“Nobody knows Derek,” Allison responds, without skipping a beat.

Her father looks at her with more than just a hint of suspicion. “That’s a weird thing to say.”

“It’s just—that’s the impression Scott and Stiles always gave me, whenever they talked about it. Never mind. Just…what did they do to Boyd and Erica?”

“They tortured them for information on Derek. Personal information. Weaknesses. Hiding places. All that.”

“Why did they need that? If they’re so powerful, couldn’t they have just made Derek join them?”

“Don’t underestimate the power of someone’s will. They knew Derek wouldn’t want to join them. For all Derek’s faults, he doesn’t want to be a murderer. Which is what the Alpha pack is---murderers. For them to get him to join, and for it to be really effective, for him to actually fight and kill alongside them, they would’ve had to get into his head. And I guess they thought Boyd and Erica were the perfect tools to understanding him.”

“Did they, uh, tell them things?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

“But how did you get involved? Derek didn’t come to you, did he?”

“No.” Her father sighs. “It didn’t take me that long to notice that there were more wolves in town. And after that I started wondering about Erica and Boyd. So I…I may have offered. Through Scott. Which I guess was good timing because apparently Derek had just been falling apart, driving himself crazy, trying to figure out how to rescue them.”

“You offered,” Allison repeats.

“Allison, don’t take it as-”

“It didn’t bother you at all? That he bit Mom? You still offered?”

“Of course it bothered me. But these were innocent teenage lives we’re talking about. If that meant teaming up with Derek—”

“Innocent teenage werewolf lives.”

Argent gulps. “Yes.”

“And you said Derek doesn’t want to be a murderer. Do you really think that? After what happened with Mom? That he could be good?” 

“What’s with the sudden interest in Derek?”

“Nothing. I just—I don’t know. Nothing.” 

“He may not be a murderer, and he may not even be evil, but he’s dangerous, Allison.” 

“I know.”

“There’s not something you aren’t telling me, is there?” he says. 

“No, Dad.” 

“I just want you to take a step back, alright? You’re a teenager. You shouldn’t have to be dealing with this stuff.”

“I have taken a step back. I honestly have. You know that Scott and I broke up for real this time. And I just see the others across the cafeteria and I’m sure with summer coming I won’t see anyone ever. Except Lydia and Jackson. But…you know, they’re all dealing with it. And they’re teenagers.” 

“And you could deal with it just as well as any of them,” her dad says, reaching across the table to cup her face with his hands. “But you shouldn’t have to. They shouldn’t, either. But you’re lucky enough that it gets to be an option for you. They can’t change what they are. You’re freer than they are.”

“I know.” She grabs onto one of his hands. “I know.”

“Okay.” He drops his hands and looks back at his plate. “I’m not actually all that hungry anymore. Maybe you’re right. I should get some sleep. You should too. You look pale.”

“I always look pale, Dad,” she says, smiling.

“Paler. Have you talked to someone? About everything? Did you make an appointment with Ms. Morrel?”

“I’m working on it,” Allison says.

“Working on it?”

Before he can ask more, she shoos him off to bed. Meanwhile, she shoos off the feeling of being a horrible daughter for about this millionth time this year.


	5. The Hales and the Argents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know this is weird, right? You’re an Argent. I can’t forget that.”
> 
> “I wouldn’t expect you to. You’re Derek Hale who bit my mom, and I’m not forgetting that,” she snaps. “But you agreed to come talk to me. You came and found me at school. There has to be a reason for that, right?”
> 
> “Yeah.”
> 
> “This is the part where you tell me the reason.”

Allison is holding her cross bow out in front of her as she walks the path to closet. She feels on edge, and she’s not sure if it’s because last time she was here she was bent on killing, if she’s worried Derek might actually hurt her, or if she’s struggling with being the worst daughter alive. Allison slowly approaches the closet door and knocks. Nothing. She presses her ear against the door, and then all of a sudden a hand is on her shoulder. She is able to contain the jump, her shoulders only rising slightly, before spinning to face Derek who, again, came out of nowhere. 

“You seriously have fun doing that, don’t you?”

His hand slides off her shoulder, and this smirk, more playful than mean, flashes across his face before his regular, broody expression returns. This desire bubbles up in her—to chase that smirk, see it again, make it stay. If Derek Hale, of all people, can smirk like that...well, the world might be a little less dreary than she thought. 

Then Derek is striding down the hallway, and Allison is standing there, staring after him. He turns back to her and raises his eyebrows at her, impatient.

Allison groans. “You’re trying to make me regret this.” 

He keeps walking, and she follows after him. 

“You do know that talking is a part of…well, talking.” 

“Hmm, you think?”

She rolls her eyes. “So where are we going?”

“Up.”

“Up,” Allison repeats. She’s now walking next to him which makes her a little uncomfortable because this isn’t exactly the widest hallway in the world and she doesn’t want her hand to brush against his. 

“You want to talk in a dank, dark hallway?” 

“Hey! You were the one who said we should meet here! And aren’t there security cameras that will see us if we go up?” 

“You don’t have to be an Argent to mess with security footage, Allison,” Derek says. 

They turn into a stairwell. Derek speeds up a little so he’s in front of her again, and she wonders if he felt it too—the weirdness of them walking side-by-side, like allies…or friends. She follows him in silence until they come out a door in the food court. She glances at a table, figures they could sit and chat for a while— I’m chatting with Derek Hale, she thinks, what did I get myself into?—but he’s still walking, briskly, ahead. He stops when they reach this fountain in the middle of the mall. Derek is frozen, staring down into it. Allison gives it an unimpressed glance. It’s just a fountain, littered with coins, like any mall fountain. 

She clears her throat, and it pulls Derek out of his trance. He sits down on the ledge of the fountain, and she sits a reasonable distance away from him, after resting her cross bow on the floor. 

“So,” she says. “Well, I have some place to start.”

He nods at her. 

“Erica and Boyd and Isaac…did you tell them what I said? I—I can apologize in person if it would-”

“Don’t. And yeah, I have.”

“And?”

“You scare them. Well, a lot scares them now. Can’t really blame them there.”

Allison frowns. “There has to be something I can do, some way I can help, some way I can-”

“No.” 

“But-”

“Just…leave them, okay? You can’t make up for it, alright?”

“Irredeemable,” Allison says, softly to herself.

“What?” Derek says.

Allison wants to back away from what she said, but she remembers that she thought Derek could be helpful for a reason and that talking to Derek actually requires her to, well, say things to him, even if those things scare her. Even if he scares her. “Irredeemable,” she says, her voice a little shaky. “You’re saying I’m irredeemable.”

“That’s not what I meant.” And he’s looking at her. Actually looking at her. In this freakishly direct way. She can’t tell what the look is, in his eyes, but it must mean something. 

“That’s what you said, though. And you know, it’s okay if you think that. I did…I did things I shouldn’t have done. And I can say Gerard manipulated me all I want, and he did, but…I did them. If my dad hadn’t broken my bow…”

“I’m not going to comfort you about hurting my pack. And if that’s what you thought you’d be getting from talking to me, forget it.” 

Derek stands to leave, and Allison grabs onto the sleeve of his leather jacket. He’s practically snarling; Allison won't be surprised if he starts foaming at the mouth. 

“Derek. I don’t need you to comfort me. I don’t. I wanted to talk to you because—because—well—there’s the rest of the pack and there’s Scott and everything, but doesn’t it always come back to the Hales and the Argents, really?” 

“Your point?”

“Our lives…they’re so….I don’t know.....” She doesn’t want to say tangled together or intertwined or anything like that because it sounds weird and fate-y and it makes her think of Scott saying he just knows they belong together and she doesn’t want to let her mind go down that road. “I just, I don’t need you to comfort me. I need you to be honest.”

“About what?”

“How to live with everything. The deaths and the war and the…things you learn about yourself. I need you to tell me how you keep living.” At this point, Allison is crying, which is the last thing she wanted to do in front of Derek Hale. 

Derek looks a little bit scared and a lot exasperated. He sighs. “Allison. Stop. Okay? Stop.”

She nods, sniffles, wipes at her eyes. 

He looks down at her hand, still clutching his sleeve. She lets go, and he sits down again. She can’t help but noting that they’re closer than they were before. 

“You know this is weird, right? You’re an Argent. I can’t forget that.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to. You’re Derek Hale who bit my mom, and I’m not forgetting that,” she snaps. “But you agreed to come talk to me. You came and found me at school. There has to be a reason for that, right?”

“Yeah.”

“This is the part where you tell me the reason.”

Derek rubs his neck with his hand. “I haven’t been the best Alpha. I promised Erica and Boyd that I’d try to be better.”

“And talking to me is going to make you a better Alpha?” A sliver of a smile appears on Allison’s lips. 

“I have to deal with some things,” he says simply. 

“Argent things?” she prompts.

“Argent things, trust things, things. Been-dealing-with-them-the-same-way-for-six-years things. I figured I had to do something drastic.”

“Like talk to me.” Allison tries to keep her smile from broadening.

Derek, who’d been looking at the ground, glances at her. “Like talk to you,” he says, trying to keep his voice devoid of emotion, but Allison swears she hears this hint of amusement, something like being charmed. He continues: “But I’m thinking we should…uh, talk about something else. For now.”

“Okay then, how about why in the world you have a hiding spot in the basement of the Beacon Hills Mall?”

“The proximity to Macy’s,” Derek says, without hesitation. 

For a second, she thinks he’s serious because she assumes Derek is always serious. But then he laughs. It’s surprising, how nice and light and gentle that laugh is. She laughs too. 

Once they’ve both stopped, she says, “You aren’t going to tell me, are you? At least not now.”

He shakes his head. 

“Okay then,” she says, clapping her hands together. “I will think of something that you can actually tell me.” She looks around the mall for inspiration and then she catches Derek staring at her, legitimately staring at her, not even glaring. She looks away. “Aha! Okay, talk to me about fashion. We’re in a mall, after all. So what’s the deal with Erica’s whole new wardrobe? Did you bite Erica and immediately whisk her away for a shopping spree?” 

“The Alpha bite makeover,” he says, with a chuckle.

“Huh?”

“Erica told me that’s what Stiles called it. But yeah, I guess that was the second step.”

“So you just know a lot about women’s fashion?”

“Erica said she wanted to be noticed. She kind of screamed it at me, actually. And that kind of fell in line with my plans—”

“Of pushing her towards my boyfriend. Well, ex-boyfriend.”

“Hey, weren’t you two broken up?” he says, doing the sassiest air quotes with his fingers during the words “broken up.” 

“Shut up.” She doesn’t even think about it, really; her hand just moves towards him, playfully pushing his arm. 

For a second, his eyes go wide, then he rushes forward: “Anyway, Erica was pretty opinionated and chose mostly everything herself. I just steered her towards some leather. Well, and paid.” 

Allison smiles before flashing back to that look Erica gave her in the cafeteria. “She’ll be okay, right?”

“You want me to be honest?”

Allison nods. 

“She’ll get through it, but she won’t be the same as she was,” he says. He gives her this significant type of look. She takes it to mean he might not actually be talking about Erica, or just Erica. That concern on his face might just be for her too. 

Which she shouldn’t care about, right? But she does. She cares, if he means it for her. She cares that he thinks she’ll survive. She cares that he’s not telling her lies about her always being that same girl at heart. She cares that he’s telling her the truth, that she’s changed and will be changing and that this stuff can’t not change you. She cares because she doesn’t know who else she could get this from as genuinely as she could get it from him. 

She cares because he seems so human—and he’s Derek Hale. 

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.” 

Allison hastily brings the conversation back around to shopping and leather jackets, and he doesn’t laugh again, doesn’t really smile, but there’s something surprisingly easy to it all. Or maybe it just feels so easy since she assumed talking to Derek would be the verbal equivalent of trudging through swamps. Eventually, he tells her that it’s getting late and that they should head home. She yawns and reaches for her bow.

“Hey,” she says, as they stand up. “You didn’t make me use this.”

“There’s always next time,” he says in a very serious tone of voice.

Derek is teasing me, Allison thinks, before she can process that he said, “next time.” She suggests that their next chat shouldn’t be so late, and he agrees. When she presses him for details, though, he just says, “I’ll let you know,” ominously.

“That better not mean snatching me in any more hallways.”

“It won’t,” he assures her.

They head back towards the basement, to exit through the doorway Allison entered. They start to head their separate ways in the parking lot, but Allison can’t let him go without calling after him, “Do you realize how long you talked to me without wanting to claw your eyes out?” 

He glares at her. “I’m good at hiding my emotions.” Then he’s walking away, into the distance. 

Back to his betas, probably. Or at least back to Isaac. And she’s heading back to her house filled with wolfsbane-tipped arrows and wolfsbane bullets and tome after tome about how to kill werewolves, about how the Argents have hunted for centuries, back to the father who would freak if he knew where she was and who she was with. 

This is a silly, stupid idea. 

She doesn’t mean to smile, but she does. So far she likes the results.


	6. Not As Much As You Should Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Lydia,” Allison says, grabbing her by the shoulders, “let me make this perfectly clear: I do not want Derek Hale.”
> 
> Lydia gets this cocky smirk on her face, and Allison wants to kill her.
> 
> “So you wouldn’t care if he, say, left a message for you?”

The school year ends, and Derek still hasn’t let Allison know about their next meeting. She tries to keep her thoughts on that limited to, Well, whatever, but she can’t stop thinking about it. Especially since her summer’s going to end up super boring. She and her dad still haven’t decided to resume training yet, and she’s barely speaking to Scott. She’ll hang out with Jackson and Lydia, of course, but ever since they got back together, they’ve been super couple-y, as if to make up for all the trauma they’ve caused each other. She and Lydia do plan on having a ton of sleepovers, though, which should be nice.

At the first sleepover of the summer, Lydia and Allison are sprawled out on Allison’s bed, flipping through copies of Teen Vogue and listening to a 90s station on Pandora (which, earlier, led to a somewhat heated Backstreet Boys versus N’Sync debate). 

Lydia shoves a fashion spread in front of Allison’s face. “Does this model look like Derek to you?”

Allison squints at a brooding male model with a square jaw, dark hair, and scruff. “A little, I guess.”

“More or less attractive?”

“I don’t know. Why are we talking about this?” Allison points out a skirt to Lydia. “What do you think of this? Cute, right?” 

“It’s boring,” Lydia replies flatly. “And more or less attractive? Come on, Allison. I want to talk men. And we’ve discussed your disastrous Scott situation to death so…” 

Allison sighs. “Okay, then. The model is less.”

Lydia closes the magazine and tosses it the floor. Then she sits up and very triumphantly announces, “I knew it!” 

“Knew what?”

“That you think Derek Hale is hot.”

“How would you know that?”

“Because I’m smart, Allison. Because I’m smart.”

Allison sits up as well, crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s not like most people wouldn’t think he’s hot, Lydia.”

“But I don’t care about what most people think. I care about what you think. And you think Derek Hale is hot, and I so knew it. Every time we mention him lately, you visibly perk up. I can practically feel the hormones. It’s ridiculous.”

“No, I don’t. And no, you can't.”

“It’s okay if you think he’s hot, Allison. You and Scott are over, and I say, if you want Derek Hale, go after him. Sure, he’s a little bit old and a lot emotionally damaged, but I mean, I’m dating Jackson, so who I am to judge?” 

“Lydia,” Allison says, grabbing her by the shoulders, “let me make this perfectly clear: I do not want Derek Hale.”

Lydia gets this cocky smirk on her face, and Allison wants to kill her.

“So you wouldn’t care if he, say, left a message for you?”

Allison wills herself to show no sign of excitement or surprise. “What are you talking about?”

“Derek showed up at Jackson’s last night when we were watching a movie. Gave us his usual Lone-wolf-doesn’t-survive speech. I thought things were pretty typical until I reached into my popcorn afterwards and found this.” Lydia grabs a folded up note from her skirt pocket. She holds it up. Allison reaches for it, and Lydia draws it back again. “Not until you tell me what’s going on with you two.”

“Nothing is going on, Lydia.”

“I’ve come to realize that when my friends tell me nothing’s going on, everything’s going on, so don’t be surprised that I don’t believe that for a second,” Lydia says. Allison is thrown off by how cold she sounds, but she knows she deserves it.

“Okay, we met once-”

“And hooked up?”

“No, Lydia. We talked.”

Lydia pouts. “Oh. Are you sure you aren’t lying?”

Allison laughs. “Yes, we just talked. It’s not a big thing.”

“Sketchy notes left in my popcorn? That’s a big thing.”

“It’s just—it’s just talking. Why would you want it to be anything more, anyway? You and Jackson are super skeptical about Derek.”

Lydia’s smirk only grows bigger.

Allison groans. “What?”

“You’re not skeptical about Derek. You said Jackson and I were, meaning you aren’t.” 

“Believe me,” Allison says, “I’m skeptical.” 

“But—let me guess—probably not as much as you should be?” 

Allison bites her lip. “I don’t know. He’s just—have you ever had an actual conversation with the guy? He’s not as...it’s just, I don’t know, I mean, he’s human, you know? He really is. And he’s lost his whole family and-”

“You have such a guys-your-dad-doesn’t-want-you-to-date thing,” Lydia says, laughing.

“I don’t want to date him.”

Lydia shrugs. “That’s what you say now.” 

“I don’t, really. I still—” Allison gulps. She and Lydia have analyzed the Scott situation together plenty of times, but that doesn’t make admitting to how broken up she is any easier.

Lydia reaches over and grabs Allison’s hand. “Sorry, I know. Like, I really, really know.”

“I’m fine,” Allison says. “Really.”

“The type of fine that would benefit from making out with Derek Hale and reporting back to me on every single detail or-”

Allison rolls her eyes. “You aren’t going to give this up, are you?”

Lydia sighs. “Sue me for being curious! He may be a creep, but I have no problem acknowledging that he is also a very attractive older man, okay?” 

“But not Jackson attractive?” Allison teases. 

“Well, obviously not.” Lydia hands Allison the note. “Here, take your totally platonic note.” 

In this messy scrawl, it reads: For Allison, Wednesday 4:00 p.m. Brewer Point. She reads the “Brewer Point” part over and over again, hoping that she’s misreading—but nope, she is, apparently, meeting Derek Hale at the same rocky cliff where she and Scott had secret romantic excursions those months when they “weren’t seeing each other.” She refolds it and puts it on her bedside table. 

“What’s that look?” Lydia says. “You’re going to go, aren’t you? Do you need support? I’ll come with you!”

“That might just be a little awkward,” Allison says, with a small smile.

“Hey, he left the note in my popcorn. I am officially involved.” 

“Which was a great choice on his part, by the way. I’m sure your involvement will just make things one hundred percent less weird,” Allison says, hitting Lydia with her rolled up copy of Teen Vogue.

“Hey! I’m fabulous, wise, give great advice, and wouldn’t you rather me know now so you don’t have to face my wrath later? And do not hit me with something I love. Hit me with a Seventeen magazine or something. Not a Teen Vogue. Now I’m going to immerse myself in summer styles, and I suggest you do the same because…well, because your closet, hon.” 

Lydia grabs another issue of Teen Vogue from their stack and lies out, again, on Allison’s bed. Allison tries to do the same, but she can’t focus on fashion. She’s been waiting to hear from Derek—she’s been expecting it—and now that she has all she can feel is apprehension.

She tells herself it shouldn’t matter if they go to Brewer Point.

It shouldn’t matter if they go where Scott had whispered “I love you,” kissing the crook of her neck. Where they held hands and watched shooting stars. Where they slept in each other’s arms until their cell phone alarms alerted them to the fact that it was way too late and their parents were going to catch them. 

It shouldn’t matter because what she’ll find with Derek is nothing more than therapy—or reluctant friendship. And being with him where she was with Scott—there’s no reason for that to make her feel so mixed-up inside or so guilty. 

Of course, this line of thought doesn’t take away the stupid churning feeling in her stomach. 

“Hey,” Lydia says, elbowing Allison in the ribs. “Tell me if this model looks like Jackson.”


	7. Belongs To Them Too

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She notices that Derek is staring at her, almost angrily, as she bites her lip. 
> 
> “Say something,” she murmurs.
> 
> “You’re confused,” he says.
> 
> She is about to ask him how he can tell, but then she remembers, duh, werewolf. Scott wasn’t the greatest at it yet, but sometimes he had been able to pick up whiffs of Allison’s emotions.
> 
> “Yeah, I guess I am,” she says.

Allison expects Derek to appear creepily behind her, but when she drives up to Brewer Point, he’s just sitting there, waiting on a boulder in a tight gray t-shirt and black pants. Allison waves at him as she approaches and he blinks at her, like he’s stunned she’s showed up, before returning to his usual displeased expression. Allison takes a seat on the boulder next to his boulder.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” he says.

“So that was an interesting move you pulled. With the note in Lydia’s popcorn. She knows now. You weren’t worried at all that she’d tell someone?”

“She’s your best friend,” he answers simply.

That startles her. She knows that Derek creeps around all the time, checking on Isaac , Erica, Boyd, Scott and Jackson, but she forgets that he knows things about her too—things about her beyond that she’s the daughter of werewolf hunters and the niece of the woman who killed his whole family.

“Um, yeah. And she’s not going to tell anyone. She didn’t even tell Jackson. I’m guessing the pack still has no idea?” 

“I convinced them that weekly Beta Bonding at the bowling alley was a good idea.”

“Weekly?”

“Is there a problem with that?” He gives her a challenging look; she can picture him using it on the pack to assert his authority. Allison assumes he’s trying to cover up the fact that he just said he wants to get together with her once a week. 

“Your first response really is always aggression, isn’t it? And no, there isn’t. Except that I’d like to have my own say in arrange things and not have you disappear for weeks and leave bossy notes in Lydia’s popcorn. I get that’s an Alpha-y thing to do, but I’m my own Alpha, alright?”

She’s surprised by her own words—“I’m my own Alpha.” She had first thought them when they were outside Scott’s house and Derek had told Scott he was like an Alpha of his own pack. She and Stiles had both looked at each other, uncomfortable with the idea. Scott had been Allison’s partner, not her boss. But they were all concerned with the murderous lizard so she hadn’t had the chance to correct Derek. 

The words seem strange now, though.

Because, well, is she her own Alpha?

She gulps, thinking how malleable she was in Gerard’s hands. How she had let Kate do the same exact thing (though on smaller, less horrifying scale). What decisions has she made on her own lately?

Besides being here with Derek.

And that is probably not the brightest decision she’s ever made. And if it’s about a boy—a man, whatever—does it even really count? Not that this is about a boy or man, she reminds herself. 

This is about healing. Coping. Doing whatever she has to in order to keep living.

She notices that Derek is staring at her, almost angrily, as she bites her lip. 

“Say something,” she murmurs.

“You’re confused,” he says.

She is about to ask him how he can tell, but then she remembers, duh, werewolf. Scott wasn’t the greatest at it yet, but sometimes he had been able to pick up whiffs of Allison’s emotions.

“Yeah, I guess I am,” she says.

He keeps staring at her.

“This is the point when a normal person would ask me why.”

He fidgets on his boulder which makes him look younger. “Go on.” 

She’s thrown by his voice, much gentler than she expected. She continues anyway: “This past year has just been a lot to process. When I came here I didn’t even know that werewolves existed, much less what my family did. And I never had the time to adjust. I was just thrown in. And now I’ve—well, a lot’s happened, that’s all.”

He sighs. “You do know you haven’t killed anyone, right?”

Allison looks down at the ground. “I know.”

“Boyd and Erica and Scott are all alive. Things could be a lot worse. You could have a lot more blood on your hands.”

She looks up. She doesn’t look at him directly because she knows that would scare him off. Instead, she just tries to glance at him. They both know Jackson would not have become the kanima if Derek hadn’t bit him. They both know Erica and Boyd would not have been tortured if Derek had only left them alone. They both know that Derek’s bite led to her mother’s death. And she’s read up on survivor’s guilt. Losing almost his whole family (except for Peter) means he has to have plenty.

He clears his throat. “Just think of how Jackson’s coping. Knowing everything that he was used for. And anyway…you, you’re just a teenager. You couldn’t have known-”

Allison shakes her head. “I’m not just a teenager. I’m seventeen years old. That’s old enough. I could’ve. I should’ve.”

Derek, who wasn’t exactly looking easygoing earlier, looks even more uncomfortable. He's practically squirming. 

“And I’m not buying that you think I should be getting a pass for being a teenager, anyway. Didn’t you say last time you weren’t going to comfort me?”

He shrugs. “Comfort…it’s nice, and it’s not something you can get very often—especially not from me. So just take it.” Derek suddenly stands up. 

“Derek, you aren’t leaving,” Allison says, her tone taking on a Lydia-esque fierceness. “Clearly this talking thing is important to you becoming a better Alpha somehow, if you went to all that trouble to leave a weird note in my best friend’s popcorn. And…well…I was talking.” 

Derek glares at her, then sits back down. 

“Anyway, like I was saying, the teenager thing…that’s not an excuse. I know you don’t know me very well, but I’m no idiot. Which is why—maybe that’s why I’m so worried. If I was just too stupid to think for myself, then I couldn’t really be to blame. But I’m not that stupid, I know I’m not. What if I did know what I was doing? And I wasn’t being manipulated? What if that’s what I wanted to do? That anger was inside me. That hate. And I can say that Gerard manipulated it but he had to manipulate something, right? There’s something in me…it has to be dark, right? There’s a part of me that’s willing to—” Allison stops short of saying “kill.” She sighs. “Sorry for ranting like that. There was just…no one I could really say that to. I’ve needed to say it for so long, but I couldn’t tell anyone. Not when my dad is so anxious about me already, and Lydia and Jackson are still recovering from so much, and Stiles is already in over his head, and Scott and I aren’t even speaking and he would just tell me I was so good anyway. Good but lost.” 

There’s silence for a few moments, then Derek says, deadpan, “So I’m your last choice."

“I doubt hanging out with an Argent was your first choice either,” Allison mutters.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Allison.” 

She’s not even disappointed. That’s better to hear than a lie.

A bit more silence. “You’re strong,” he says, like it’s some sort of promise. It’s a weird thing to say, Allison can’t help but think, especially since she wonders if striving to be strong contributed to her messing up so much. It’s a weird thing to say because being strong isn’t her main concern anymore; she also wants to know that she is good. Then she realizes that this is something he must say to himself, to get through all the grief and poor choices and chaos, and then it almost feels like a gift.

“You too,” she says back at almost a whisper.

This catches Derek off-guard. Allison figures he probably hasn’t heard a compliment in a long, long time. She gives him a gentle smile to let him know she means it, and he comes very close to smiling back before he comes to his senses—it must be too close to an emotional moment for him—and rolls his eyes. 

Allison doesn’t mind that he ruins that emotional moment because she still feels like they’re at the start of something. An almost emotional moment in Brewer Point with Derek Hale--that has to be something. At that point, she remembers where she is and is terrified that she had forgotten about all her memories with Scott there for almost the entire course of the conversation. Instead of letting herself go there, she pushes Scott to the back of her mind again.

Allison is right. That day is the start of a routine. Derek’s pack heads out for bowling, Allison tells her dad that she’s meeting up with Lydia, and they meet there at Brewer Point. In the beginning, she keeps thinking about telling Derek they should change locations, but she never says it. Though it gives her mixed feelings, something tells her not to part with this spot because somehow, after that first conversation with Derek sitting on the boulders, it belongs to them too. 

She tells Derek things she can’t say to anyone else, and Derek listens and grunts and tells her he doesn’t know what to say, and that’s okay, more than okay, because Derek hearing her—sometimes even understanding her— is more than anyone else can offer. And sometimes Derek will even be the one saying things he’s not saying to anyone else. Sure, those things are usually about how he’s so frustrated with Jackson for not just joining up already or Scott’s fickleness when it comes to pack position, but that’s also okay, more than okay. Without fail, she leaves each meeting at Brewer Point with hope that she’s one step closer to breaking through to the real, human, hurting Derek Hale.


	8. If She's Lying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jackson laughs. “You’re friends with Derek Hale?”
> 
> “Yeah. Do you have a problem with that?”
> 
> “Um, sort of. I would like to think you have good taste in friends.” He takes a hand off the wheel to gesture towards himself. “Better than you have in boyfriends, at least. Oh gross, Derek isn’t your boyfriend, is he?”

It’s the beginning of August. Allison is curled up in the chair in the corner of Lydia’s living room. Lydia is pacing as she screeches at Jackson, who is on the couch, looking at the ground.

“Jackson, who knows what you could’ve done? You were supposed to meet me! You do get that this is dangerous stuff you’re dealing with? You turn into a werewolf, Jackson. A werewolf! We had a plan!”

“I didn’t want to be chained up again like some dog,” Jackson says. He looks up at her defiantly and juts out his chin. 

“Oh, poor baby. You can’t let your pride get in the way of the safety of everyone in Beacon Hills, Jackson. We’ve talked about this. Tell him, Allison! Maybe he’ll listen to you. Why listen to me? What do I know? I’m just some human who didn’t even need to know werewolves existed! Come on, Allison, tell him.”

Allison is thrown by her sudden inclusion. She doesn’t want to be in the middle of this. At the beginning of the summer, Jackson and Lydia were so happy about being reunited that they were gushy and peaceful and practically codependent. Lately, though, tensions have been rising between them. This doesn’t surprise Allison. Lydia has basically taken on all the responsibility of guiding Jackson through all this werewolf stuff, since he refuses to trust anyone but her (and occasionally Allison). And Lydia’s knowledge from werewolves comes from Allison, Jackson, and scary Peter Hale-induced Hallucinations. It’s not exactly a stress-free situation.

“You’re right,” Allison says, then goes back to pretending she’s not there.

“I didn’t hurt anyone! I’m more experienced now,” Jackson says.

“I can’t do this anymore, Jackson. Not if you’re not going to cooperate with me.” 

“What do you mean by ‘this’?” 

Lydia rolls her eyes. “I’m not breaking up with you, you idiot. Or dumping, as you would say. But I can’t be the one taking care of you right now, at least not in the werewolf department, because, you know, I have a lot to do in terms of taking care of myself at the moment.”

“Lydia,” Jackson says softly.

Again, Allison wishes she were somewhere else. 

Lydia rubs at one of her teary eyes viciously, which, of course, only makes things worse. “Figure something out.” She huffs, then storms up the stairs to her room. Allison waits for Jackson to follow her, but he just sits there, looking glum.

“Don’t you think you should go talk to her?”

“Whatever. I don’t need this. I’m out of here.”

“Jackson, do you really think that’s the best idea?”

He’s halfway to the door. “I was the one who came up with it, so yes.”

Allison lets him leave and starts towards the stairs, because Lydia is going to be in need of some comfort. She makes it halfway up the steps when she gets this sudden urge to go after Jackson instead. She can fix this--not only for Lydia and Jackson, but for Derek as well. None of them are happy with the current arrangement, and if she can just get Jackson to agree to being in Derek’s pack, she’s sure everything will be better. She runs down the steps and out the door. Jackson is about to start the Porsche. She pounds on his windows, and he rolls it down.

“What are you doing, Allison?”

“We need to talk.”

He looks at her suspiciously. “About what?”

“Let me in. We’ll take a drive and talk.”

“You aren’t hitting on me, are you? Because Lydia and I did not break up and we aren’t breaking up and I know you’re missing McCall though I still don’t understand why because, him, Allison, seriously, but-”

Allison wants to smack him. Jackson is pretty and he really isn’t such a bad guy underneath it all, but sometimes he’s just the worst. “No, I’m not hitting on you. Can we just talk, please, about all this werewolf stuff? I can help.”

He unlocks the side door. As she gets in, she texts Lydia: Think I can fix this. Be back in 15. <3 you, it’ll be okay. Jackson speeds off before Allison can buckle her seatbelt. 

“Go,” he says.

Allison realizes she has no idea what to say or how to convince him. She has no strategy. Just a strong conviction that this will be right for everyone. So she just says it: “Join Derek’s pack.”

“What?” Jackson says. “Derek? I thought you were going to tell me to go join up with McCall.” He sniffs in her direction. “You’ve been around Derek, haven’t you? I don’t know why I didn’t notice it before. I mean, the smell’s there. Hardly there, but still.” Before Allison can reply, Jackson starts ranting. “You do know he’s dangerous, right? He can hurt you, Allison. What are you thinking? I’ll kill him. I really will. If he’s using you to get to me….I’ll take him out, I will, I don’t care if he’s the Alpha.”

“He’s not using me to get to you. We’re just-”

“Just what?” Jackson sniffs again, as if that should tell him the state of Allison’s relationship with Derek; she’s not sure if it works like that or not.

“Friends.”

Jackson laughs. “You’re friends with Derek Hale?”

“Yeah. Do you have a problem with that?”

“Um, sort of. I would like to think you have good taste in friends.” He takes a hand off the wheel to gesture towards himself. “Better than you have in boyfriends, at least. Oh gross, Derek isn’t your boyfriend, is he?”

“No. We’re friends which I would appreciate you not spreading around. And he’s not using me. And if he was, believe me, I would take care of it. He didn’t even ask me to talk to you about this. I just think it’s the right thing for you to do.”

“He’s a creep, Allison.”

“He’s not.”

He gives her a withering stare.

“Okay, maybe he is, but he is also a good guy. He wants to look out for you.”

“I can look after myself. I know I didn’t kill anyone last night. I had it under control.”

“That’s one night, Jackson. One night out of the rest of your life. He knows about being a werewolf. He’s always been one. He’s always been around them. And if you join the pack, you don’t just get Derek. You get other people there for you, understanding you, protecting you. I know you don’t think you need anyone, but…it’s just smart strategy, Jackson. It really is. You want to live and you want Lydia and Danny and your parents safe, right? And the Jackson Whittemore I know is a smart guy, a really smart guy, who does what he needs to do to get what he wants. Derek is a step towards getting what you want.” 

“That’s what I thought last time,” Jackson mutters as he takes a sharp turn.

“I understand. It’s uncomfortable for you, but—well, you might come to a point where you don’t have any other options. Lydia is exhausted and scared, and I can help you as much as I can, but not the way Derek or the pack can.” 

“Why Derek, though? Why not Scott?”

Allison wasn’t expecting this question. She opens her mouth, then closes it again, hoping something brilliant will come. Nothing does. 

“I—I mean, it’s up to you. Scott would help. He would be great at it. If you want to go to Scott, that’s fine. I just think, Derek really feels a responsibility to you and he wants you to be a part of his pack and it would be good for him…and you…and…well….it’s up to you, but think about it, alright?”

“Someone has a crush,” Jackson says.

“Shut up.”

“Come on, do you like him, Allison?”

“Not like that.”

He raises his eyebrows at her in this I-know-better-than-you way. She wonders if she’s lying.

\--

After Jackson tells her he’ll think about it, he drops her back off at Lydia’s, where she stays for a few more hours. Lydia insists that she does not need comforting and instead spends a ridiculous amount of time talking about this tedious translation project which sounds horrible to Allison but is apparently relaxing for Lydia.

Allison is exhausted when she enters her empty house and heads upstairs. She hopes her father is out doing something enjoyable for himself, but she doubts it. She’s thinking she should plan something fun for them to do together. It’s been so long since they’ve done anything fun.

She’s debating father-daughter bowling versus mini golf when she opens the door and screams. Derek Hale is sitting on the floor, back against the bed. He’s nonchalantly flipping through a clothing catalog. 

“Derek! What are you doing?”

“I had to talk to you,” he says, as if the most obvious thing in the world.

“My father could’ve killed you.”

“I saw him leave, Allison. I’m not an idiot. I just—this couldn’t wait.”

“Is something wrong? What happened? Who’s not okay?” Allison says. “Do I need to go get my bow?”

“No, nothing like that. Jackson came to me today.”

“Oh, did he?”

“He joined the pack.”

“That’s great,” Allison says warmly. She sits down on her bed. “I’m really happy for you, Derek.”

He turns towards her. “You had something to do with it.”

“Someone sounds awfully sure of himself.”

“Allison.” His tone is exasperated but in a familiar way that makes her feel oddly fuzzy. 

“I didn’t do anything big. I just talked to him a little.”

“He must trust you,” Derek says.

“I guess so,” Allison answers, as she eyes Derek cautiously. This is weird. He’s looking at her so seriously—but it’s something different than his usual dour seriousness. She wishes, briefly, that she could have werewolf senses so she could know what his look means, if it’s conflicted or fearful or maybe just surprised someone, especially an Allison-Argent-type-of-someone, cared about his happiness. But she doesn’t so he’s still just a mystery to untangle.

Before he says anything else, Allison’s phone starts ringing. 

“It’s my dad,” she says. “You should probably leave. I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Tell him you’re with Lydia.”

“Derek, I-”

“Just do it,” he says, his voice in full-on Alpha command mode. She wants to tell him not to use that tone with her but she really should be answering her phone. Also, there’s something kind of exciting about Derek wanting so badly to talk to her. Sure, she and Derek have been spending time together once a week—time that’s gotten increasingly longer. Derek even makes the pack gets dinner after bowling, to ensure that nobody ever notices them together. Still, they’ve never met outside of those weekly talks. 

“Please,” Derek adds. He flashes this smooth smile. 

Allison rolls her eyes and picks up. 

“What took you so long?” her dad asks as soon as she says, “Hi.”

“I left my phone up in Lydia’s room. We were in the kitchen getting snacks.”

“What did I tell you about keeping your phone on you?”

“I know, Dad. All times.”

“That’s my girl.” She tries to pretend that doesn’t hurt, that it doesn’t kill her that she’s going behind her father’s back again, this time with Derek Hale, who is even less liked by her father than Scott. “Do you want me to pick you up something for dinner while I’m out?”

“No, I’m just going to eat here with Lydia, if that’s not a problem,” Allison says. 

Meanwhile, Derek is smirking at her because he’s getting what he wants. What Allison wants is to hit him, even if she likes seeing that smirk much more than that stoic face he puts on all the time. 

“No, that’s fine. When should I expect you home?”

“I’ll try to be back by eight.”

“You’ll try?”

“I will most definitely be back by eight.” 

“That’s better. Love you, kid. Have fun.”

“Love you too, Dad.”

Allison hangs up. “Okay, well, we should probably get out of here, like, now. Where’s the Camaro?”

“I wasn’t going to park the Camaro outside of your house, Allison. Someone could’ve seen it.”

“Sorry, I didn’t know that crossed the line, but breaking into my bedroom was perfectly acceptable.” Allison walks over to the window. “Well, are you coming or not?”

Derek stands and rests the catalog back on Allion’s bed. “I was going to use the door.”

“You’re too cool to go out the window if someone else is doing it too? Sorry, but it’s not all that special.” Allison opens the window. “Come on, we might as well go out the same way you came in.”

Derek’s staring at her now, and it’s not a harsh stare. Not at all. It reminds her, for a moment, of the way Scott used to look at her. Then it’s gone, and he’s striding over, and Allison is sure that she just imagined that soft wonder in his eyes. Derek probably isn’t even capable of looking at someone that way.

Sure, he’s human. More human than she ever thought at first. But he’s also more wounded than anyone she knows, and considering the life she leads, that’s saying a whole lot. 

He couldn’t have looked at her like that, she decides. And she couldn’t have wanted him to.


	9. I Felt Safe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Why would you do that?” he repeats, his tone just as level as before.
> 
> She sighs. “It just seemed like the right thing to do, okay?”
> 
> “You care about me,” he says suddenly—maybe even fearfully. Then he looks at her, intently, as if for confirmation. 
> 
> She tries to shrug as casually as possible. “Yeah, I do.”

Derek takes her to the mall because at this time Brewer Point isn’t the best secret hide-out. Isaac likes to run in the woods so he might pass by. Boyd and Erica might even be with him since he’s working at getting them comfortable in the woods again. Derek says the last thing they need is Erica, Boyd, and Isaac coming across them, though at this point, Allison is starting to wonder if it’s inevitable.

Jackson and Lydia already know, and Jackson’s in the pack now. 

Allison doesn’t think she’d mind them knowing. Maybe if Derek, of all people, can trust Allison not to kill him, that would show Boyd and Erica that she doesn’t want to hurt them—at least, not anymore. 

They sit at that same fountain that she and Derek had gone to the first time they talked. Derek is silent and staring at the ground. He had been particularly quiet the whole way there—even for him.

“So…what did you need to say that was important enough for you to break into my house?” Allison says.

“You got Jackson to join the pack,” Derek says.

“I only talked to him a little. I thought we covered this.”

“Why would you do that?”

“What do you mean, why would I do that?” 

“Why would you do that?” he repeats, his tone just as level as before.

She sighs. “It just seemed like the right thing to do, okay?”

“You care about me,” he says suddenly—maybe even fearfully. Then he looks at her, intently, as if for confirmation. 

She tries to shrug as casually as possible. “Yeah, I do.”

Derek gulps, squeezes his hands into fists. “I—I wanted to thank you.”

They are sitting much closer than they had that first meeting, but Allison still wants to move closer to him, to rub his shoulder, to tell him that he doesn’t have to look so scared about her caring or about wanting to thank her. She wants to whisper that it’s alright. But she stays where she is. 

“You’re welcome, Derek.” 

He smiles a little, though mostly he still looks scared. He stops looking at her and looks into the fountain. She remembers how he couldn’t tell her why he was hiding in the mall, of all places. She thinks maybe she could find out now. Allison is wondering how to phrase his question tactfully when he just offers it up—“My mom and I used to go to this mall every weekend.”

“Oh,” Allison says. 

“From when I was seven to when I was thirteen, every weekend, just me and my mom. We would go to the food court and get lunch and we’d always eat it here, around the fountain. Then we would go to the bookstore and sometimes the video game store, but it wasn’t really about buying things, you know. It was….well, she thought I needed extra attention.” 

He’s blushing, and Allison really wants to close the distance between them. She wants to reach for his hand but she knows that would ruin it. 

“You probably wouldn’t be surprised if I told you I was kind of a moody kid.”

She laughs gently. Tells her hand to stay put. 

“I guess I was always sort of quiet and serious, and you know, I had a…I had a big family. And there were always relatives around. And so a lot of the time I just sat back, you know, and watched. So it meant a lot. That time with my mom. That attention.”

“That sounds really nice, Derek. Your mom sounds—she sounds great.”

“She was,” he says. He’s turned more towards the fountain now. He runs his fingers along the water. “One day when I was ten, we were walking in the mall and someone was following us.”

She feels a flare of panic in her chest. “Oh no.” 

“Your dad. I knew about hunters but I’d never really seen them before. My mom grabbed my hand really tightly, and she just said, ‘Don’t let go,’ and I should’ve been scared. But she smiled at me and it seemed like it was going to be alright, and looking back I don’t even know how mom got him off our tail, but she took me right through that Employees Only door, right to the basement, found a closet, and got us inside. And she was on the phone, talking with my dad, and I could tell she was worried, but she didn’t stop holding my hand. And I never thought anything would really happen to us. It was the weirdest thing. There was this person following us. Your dad. And I knew he was a hunter. But I was young and I was with my mom and this place was special and I—well, I felt safe.”

“And that’s why you came back here? When you were hiding from the Alpha Pack?”

His voice resumes some of its regular proud, unaffected Alpha tone. “I knew your family investigated it, but I knew it was a place the Alphas would never think to look.” 

“You come back here because you felt safe here,” Allison says. 

“Yeah.” Derek is staring at the ground. 

“You let me come here.” 

He doesn’t say anything. 

“And you trusted me enough to tell me that story.”

Derek flinched at “trusted,” but he does not correct her. “I wanted you to know,” he says, practically whispering. “I don’t know why.” 

Allison sits on her hands. She feels antsy and flattered and warm and—strange, mostly strange. 

“Sick of me just talking at you probably,” she says, with a smile. “It was time to turn the tables.” 

He’s smiling back at her, and there’s no fear in it this time. He’s just genuinely, brightly smiling in this way that just doesn’t make sense because he’s Derek Hale, broken Derek Hale, but it really is happening. And that smile is such a gorgeous smile and she just loves seeing it and she wonders if there can be anything as satisfying as seeing that smile, really, and she wonders how it came to this—how at one point she was ready to kill anything that came in the way of her killing him and now she’s practically ready to kill anything that gets in the way of that smile. 

And then she’s moving as fast as her thoughts are, standing up and striding over to him, grabbing his face, pressing her mouth onto his, plunging her hand into his hair, and she’s moving so fast that it takes her a few seconds to realize that Derek is barely kissing her back. 

She pulls away. 

His face looks pained, and his voice is all gentle and sad as he says, “We can’t do that, Allison.” She wonders if he’s sad for her or himself or both. 

“We can if we want,” she replies, in this quiet, stubborn tone that she knows is just making her seem like more of a child. 

“You should get home.”

“Derek, it’s okay if you don’t want to kiss me. I don’t care about that,” Allison says, reaching tentatively for his hands. “But I still—I like that you shared with me, alright?” Her fingers wrap around his wrists, and he looks absolutely stricken. She lets go. “I like this…friendship or whatever it is.” 

“You should get home,” he repeats.

Allison gulps. “Fine then.”

She attempts to strut down the mall in a manner so confident that both Derek and her self will be convinced that she doesn’t care about that rejection, that an impulsive kiss is an impulsive kiss and nothing more. That’s how Lydia would handle this situation, and though she usually doesn’t aspire to be like Lydia, that air of emotional invincibility, would come in handy about now.

But she is not Lydia.

So she stops and turns around. “I’ll see you at Brewer Point. Normal time?”

“Allison,” Derek says, in a tone that Allison knows means he’s going to say something she doesn’t want to hear. He’s still sitting at the fountain. He’s barely moved at all since she’s kissed him.

“I’ll see you at Brewer Point,” she says. “Normal time then.”

Before he can tell her otherwise, she struts away—though her strutting really resembles hurrying more than anything else.


	10. Not Kate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She runs and she runs, thinking if her feet pound against the pavement hard enough, the images of Kate grabbing hold of Derek’s face—younger, clean-shaven, maybe even naïve—and pressing her lips to his will go away.

Allison sits cross-legged on her bed. She isn’t sure where to go from here. She kissed Derek Hale. Right on the mouth and everything. So maybe Lydia and Jackson are right after all, and her feelings for Derek aren’t strictly platonic. On top of having to sort all that out, there’s the whole other issue of his response. Not kissing her back was one thing, but sending her away? What an overreaction! They could’ve just talked about it or something.

She thinks of calling Lydia so she can give her a play-by-play and they can analyze it, but that almost seems wrong. Like a betrayal of Derek’s trust. Her kiss did something to him. It made him more vulnerable than ever.

Allison sighs and decides that she will work through this on her own. She thinks for a few more minutes about the fact that she kissed Derek Hale, that she’s thought all this time she’s been in love with Scott and that well maybe she still is but there’s something undeniably there—something she’s feeling for Derek—before realizing mulling this over is torture.

Allison decides to go on a run and clear her head. She changes into work-out clothes, then heads downstairs. Her father is reading in the dining room.

“I’m gonna go out running for a little bit,” Allison says.

“Wait a minute! How’s Lydia?”

“She’s good.”

“And Jackson?” he says, something knowing to his tone. Allison’s been aware that her father’s been keeping an eye out on Jackson—reasonable, since, up to this point, he’s been a brand new werewolf with only his immune, genius girlfriend and the daughter of a hunter to help him out.

“What about Jackson?” Allison smiles coyly.

“I have reports of him heading towards the Hale house today. You know what that might be about?”

“I thought you didn’t want me involved.”

Her father glares at her. “You can tell me if he joined the pack.”

She shrugs. “It’s a good thing, isn’t it? That he’ll have Derek to teach him? Keep him under control?”

“Yeah,” her father admits. “It is.”

Allison moves to head towards the door.

“I know you’ve been helping out with Jackson, but now that he’s in the pack, I really think it’s best that you just stay out of things. You know, until we decide what we’re doing…hunting-wise.”

Allison wonders if that really is the solution—if things could be that easy. Stay out of it. Stay away from Derek who doesn’t want to kiss her. Continue avoiding Scott. Leave the rest of the pack alone.

But at this point, Derek is her friend (at the very least) and she doesn’t know if it’s possible for her to stay out of things. She doesn’t know if she wants it to be possible.

“Allison,” her father says. “You seem off. Talk to me.”

“It’s nothing, Just honestly wondering how long it’s possible for me to stay out of it. It seems like eventually I’m going to get drawn back in. Like, maybe I’m supposed to be drawn back in.”

He sighs and tells her to sit down. She does so—even though she’s feeling more restless than ever and wants to run straight out of the house.

“You know, when something gets taken too far, it’s important to take that time out…to reassess. Things can go on without you. If your Aunt Kate had only—”

“I’m not Kate!” Allison replies.

She’s surprised to hear herself say that and mean it. It’s like verbally vanquishing her greatest fear. She still feels that potential there. She sees it in the frightened expressions of Boyd and Erica and Isaac that still haunt her when she closes her eyes. But she isn’t Kate. She’s getting farther and farther from being Kate. She’s chosen a different pathway. She’s chosen sharing little pieces of her heart with an Alpha werewolf and seeing him as a person and wanting him safe, wanting them all safe, and that’s not something Kate would’ve ever picked.

Though, knowing her aunt, she wouldn’t have minded being around Derek just to lick her lips at the sight of his body, even if she hated werewolves. In fact, Allison wouldn’t be surprised if her aunt tried more than just licking her lips.

And that’s when it hits her. Maybe she did.

Her father is saying how he didn’t mean that she was Kate, how they’re different, how they’ll stay different, but she’s distracted. Possibilities are starting to come together. Allison says, “Dad, I have to go,” and jogs towards the door.

She looks back at her father’s concerned face and tries to give him a reassuring smile and an explanation—“Gotta go before it’s too dark”—before she darts out the door.

She’s remembering, now, when her aunt had shown her Derek in werewolf form, chained up underneath the Hale house. She had mostly been concerned about, you know, the existence of werewolves thing and the fact that she was from a family of werewolf hunters, but looking back, she remembers the way her aunt was with Derek. Brutal. Taunting. But with that hungry look to her. A look that hinted at a past. She remembers Derek looking so broken. She assumed that was the result of capture and torture and all that, but maybe it was about Kate. Maybe…

She keeps running.

She doesn’t want it to be true. Maybe it’s only her imagination.

Kate obviously did a lot of horrible things, but she wouldn’t have gotten with Derek when he was only a teenager, then burned practically his whole family alive….right? Still, Allison can’t get the ‘what if?’ out of her mind.

There she’d been, Kate’s niece. Kissing him. Maybe like Kate had once. Kate who hadn’t cared about him, really. Kate who had ruined his life. Kate who had betrayed him.

And even if he wants to kiss her back, how can he? After all that?

These thoughts make Allison feel sick.

It’s miraculous that they’ve even managed to strike up a friendship. If what she's suspecting is true—well, Derek is even stronger than she had thought, to even look Allison in the eyes.

She runs and she runs, thinking if her feet pound against the pavement hard enough, the images of Kate grabbing hold of Derek’s face—younger, clean-shaven, maybe even naïve—and pressing her lips to his will go away.

\--

When Allison shows up at Brewer Point, usual time and day, she’s surprised that Derek is actually there. He looks nervous. His hands are drumming against the boulder he’s sitting on, and it’s actually kind of cute. She wishes it wasn’t.

“You’re here,” she says.

He nods. He’s not looking at her. “We need to talk.”

She sits down in the dirt in front of him since she figures he’s going to try looking at the ground the whole time anyway. “Yeah, we do. But—uh, thanks for coming. I know it would’ve been easy not to.”

“I stick to my word,” he says.

“I know. And thank you for that.”

He opens his mouth to start, and she can feel it coming. Him saying they shouldn’t be spending time together anymore. And she’s not letting that happen. She had thought about it—as she was running the other night, as she woke up with too vivid dreams of Kate’s hand caressing Derek’s perfect cheekbone. She thought maybe being around her was just torture for him and it would be better—nicer—to let him pretend this summer hadn’t happened. But then when she thought longer, she remembered him smiling. She remembered that he was genuinely opening up. She remembered how the only reason he took her up on her offer in the first place was to be a better Alpha. Allison believes she’s good for him—and that he’s good for her too.

“I need to ask you something,” she says quickly.

“Yeah?”

“Were you—you and my aunt—did you….”

Derek makes this little whimper sound in the back of his throat, and she knows it’s like she imagined. Or worse. Allison slides a little closer to Derek and the boulder.

“You don’t have to tell me. I just….”

He nods, then in a voice that’s very obviously trying to sound tough, says: “We dated. Had some different ideas on romance, me and Kate.”

“I’m so sorry, Derek.

He gulps. “You didn’t do anything.”

“I know that.”

“I was a stupid teenager. I trusted her.”

“Derek…” He’s not looking at Allison at all. His jaw is clenched, and he’s staring upwards at the sky, and she’s wondering if maybe he’s looking up because his eyes are filling up with tears. Though she’s greedily gobbled up moments of Derek vulnerability, this is too much. Nobody should have to go through this. “You don’t—you don’t blame yourself, do you? For the fire?”

He doesn’t say anything.

Allison stands, in hopes that she might be able to look him in the eye, but he ducks his head. “Please look at me. Please, Derek.” After a few seconds, he looks at her. His eyes are rimmed with red, and he looks so raw and broken that Allison almost wants to take a step back. But she doesn’t. She looks right back into those eyes. “It’s not your fault. Okay? It’s not. It never was. That fire will never be your fault. You did not kill your family. Kate did. And if you and Kate hadn’t…done whatever, she would’ve found a way, okay? She didn’t need you to do what she did. This is probably what she wanted—for you to take on this guilt, but it’s not your guilt. It’s hers. You were a child, Derek. You can’t blame yourself for not knowing—you can’t blame yourself, okay?”

He’s still staring at her with these huge eyes, and his eyebrows are furrowed and confused. She’s sure nobody else has ever said this to him. She can’t imagine Derek bringing up all this massive guilt—or Kate—in conversation.

“I know that’s hard,” Allison continues. “Because you’ve been thinking this way so long. And I’m so, so sorry for that. Because you deserve better than to have to think like that, Derek. You deserve better than everything that’s happened, okay? You didn’t cause this. Any of it. It was Kate, okay? Kate did it. And it wasn’t you, alright? It wasn’t you.”

She can tell he’s forcing the rest of his face to look as blank as possible, but his eyes are watering and he’s shaking just a little.

“Can I hug you?” Allison is whispering now. “I won’t if that would make it worse.”

His head jerks down slightly in a nod, and Allison doesn’t let him think twice about it. She throws her arms around him and squeezes hard, and it feels a hundred times more intimate than her lips on his. She could spend all day here, just surrounding him, this immovable rock, with her arms. After a few seconds, she feels his hand clutching almost desperately at the back of her shirt, and she hugs a little tighter after that.

She wonders when he was hugged last. Before Laura died, maybe. That makes her want to cry. With how sucky her life’s been lately, hugs from her dad or Lydia and sometimes even quick, awkward ones from Jackson have been helping her get through things. She can’t imagine not having someone to hold onto.

When Derek finally moves to break the hug, Allison’s a bit misty-eyed too.

“Don’t tell anyone about this,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Any of it.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“I need to go.” He’s trying to compose himself with some deep breathing, but he’s still fidgety as he stands up. He keeps pulling at the sleeves of his leather jacket and tugging at his jeans.

“Okay, but please, don’t cut me off, okay? I won’t you kiss again.” He’s looking at her with that soft gaze again, that soft, confused, awed gaze. She adds: “Unless you let me.”

He rolls his eyes. “Same time, same place. Like always.”

“Like always,” Allison repeats cheerily.

As he walks away, she adds, under her breath, “I promise I’m not Kate.” He’s far enough away that it would be impossible for him to hear if he weren't a werewolf. He pauses, just a second. Allison thinks he sees his neck twitch. Then he keeps on walking.


	11. On Your Calendar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The door swings open, and Peter is standing there, and her throat goes dry because sometimes she forgets that Peter is still around “helping” Derek. Derek had quickly noticed how uncomfortable mentions of Peter made her and barely ever talked about him, so she’s spent most of the summer pretending he’d never come back from the dead. But now here he is, smiling at her. 
> 
> “Derek, I think you have a visitor. Or are you here for Scott?”
> 
> Derek and Scott enter from a different room, both looking equally stunned. Allison opens her mouth, but she’s speechless.

The next day, Allison and her dad go shopping for school supplies at Staples. Junior year is close now, and Allison isn’t sure how to feel about that. Run-ins with Scott are bound to be more awkward than ever. She hopes Boyd, Erica, and Isaac won’t be completely afraid of her. Maybe I’ll make some new friends, she thinks, as she drops a few notebooks into the cart her father is pushing. She imagines befriending someone normal and well-adjusted who’s not at all involved in the supernatural world—then remembers the only new friend she’s made lately is Derek Hale. Allison is smirking to herself when she sees them—Scott and Stiles across the store. She instinctively ducks behind the cart.

“Allison, are you alright?” her father says.

She shushes him. Then her father makes eye contact with Scott across the Staples. She’s surprised by Scott’s lack of fear. He smiles goofily, waves, and begins walking over, with Stiles trailing behind. Her stomach sinks because she’s so sure Scott is coming over to ask how she is because that would be so like him and it makes her feel terrible because she kissed Derek Hale and Scott would die if he knew. When it’s clear that Scott is still coming and he’ll see her, Allison makes a show of fussing with her shoes, as if she’s tying them (even though they’re black flats).

“Mr. Argent—uh, Allison, hi.”

Allison pops up. “Oh, I didn’t see you. Hi Scott.”

Scott gives his biggest grin. Then his face changes in an instant. He’s frowning, his eyebrows scrunched together.

“Mr. Argent, do you mind if I, uh, talk to Allison alone?” He’s anxious—and not just still-in-love-with-Allison anxious. It only takes a second for Allison to realize she must still smell like Derek after having her arms wrapped around him so long.

“I mind if Allison minds,” her father answers.

“I’m fine,” Allison says. “Just a second, Dad.”

She follows Scott down the printer aisle. Stiles is about to follow when her father’s hand lands heavily on Stiles’s shoulder. She’ll have to ask what that interrogation’s about later.

“So,” Allison says lightly, “how’s your summer been?”

“You smell like Derek,” Scott whispers.

“I better switch perfumes then.” She smiles and hopes he will laugh. He doesn’t.

“Are you in trouble, Allison?” Scott sniffs. “I smell him a lot.”

She’s not looking at him. “I’m fine, Scott. So what classes are you in—” 

“Allison!” he practically shouts. Her father and Stiles are staring, as is a Staples employee. “Talk to me,” he adds, in a quieter voice. “Actually talk to me.” 

“Can you not mention this to my dad?” she says under her breath. 

“This! What is this?” 

Both of them have stopped walking now. Allison’s hands are in the pockets of her dress. She breathes deeply.

“It’s nothing, Scott.”

“Allison, please, just…please don’t lie to me.”

“We’re friends, Scott.” 

“If we’re such good friends then why don’t you tell me why you smell like Derek Hale?”

“I mean, Derek and I—Derek and I are friends.”

Scott shakes his head. “That’s—no, no, you’re not.”

“We are.”

“He’s up to something.”

“No, he’s not.”

“You don’t know Derek like-” He stops and sniffs again. Sounding suspicious, he asks, “How well do you think you know Derek?”

“Can you stop smelling me please? And…I don’t know. But I know he’s not up to something. Now can you and Stiles just continue with your shopping? I’ll see you in school, alright?” 

Allison brushes past Scott. He grabs onto her arm. It’s gentle but unnerving. It’s been months since they’ve touched. A part of her still wants to be wrapped up, secure, in his arms…and a part of her is surprised that she’s not feeling much more than she is. It’s not the same as it was before. She wonders if this has something to do with Derek. 

“Allison, just trust me. You don’t know what he’s like. He’s using you to get me in the pack or something. You need to-”

“I don’t need to do anything,” Allison snaps. “And excuse me, but you don’t know what Derek’s like either. I have a good enough memory to know that you said Derek was a mystery to you. And get your hand off my arm.”

“Allison-”

“And you just…you leave him alone, alright?” 

She knows from the look in his eyes, which is more panicked than before, that he won’t. That he’ll rush off to find Derek and tell him to stay away, thinking that he’s being her protector. Scott thinking she couldn’t handle herself always made Allison uncomfortable but it makes her even more uncomfortable now. 

Allison rushes back to her dad. “See you at school, Stiles,” she says hastily. Then she grabs the cart and charges with it down the next aisle. 

\--

Allison is knocking on the door to Derek’s apartment. She knows this could be a bad idea—that Erica or Isaac or Boyd might be there—but Derek has the right to be warned before Scott ambushes him.

The door swings open, and Peter is standing there, and her throat goes dry because sometimes she forgets that Peter is still around “helping” Derek. Derek had quickly noticed how uncomfortable mentions of Peter made her and barely ever talked about him, so she’s spent most of the summer pretending he’d never come back from the dead. But now here he is, smiling at her. 

“Derek, I think you have a visitor. Or are you here for Scott?”

Derek and Scott enter from a different room, both looking equally stunned. Allison opens her mouth, but she’s speechless. 

“Don’t just stand there,” Peter Hale says. “Come on in, dear.” And he reaches out to her, which would be innocent enough from anyone else but since it’s Peter Hale, Scott moves forward, Derek practically growls, “Don’t touch her,” and Allison is preparing to flip him over—or at least try if she has to. Peter is not an idiot so he drops his hand back to his side and backs off.

Allison walks into the apartment. She’s never been there before and she wants to take it all in. She wants to know the books on Derek’s shelves, what’s in his kitchen cupboards. She wants to study the pictures on the mantle. She wants to know everything. But seeing Peter up close again has left her feeling a little shaky, and all three of them are looking at her expectantly. 

She really should’ve expected this. She had to finish up shopping with her dad, then make some type of excuse before she could come, and Scott had probably bolted as soon as they’d finished talking.

“Scott knows,” Allison says, kind of helplessly.

“I got that,” Derek says. “Much more loudly from Scott, though.”

Scott blushes. “It’s good you’re here, Allison. Maybe all three of us can talk about this.”

“Scott, I don’t need you talking about this at all.”

“But-” 

“This isn’t some issue that needs to be fixed, alright? It just is. And you don’t get a say in it. I’m not someone you need to save this time.”

“Allison, I’m not trying to be a jerk. I just—do you know who this is? This is Derek Hale! This is the guy who bit your mother-”

Derek’s looking down at the floor.

“To save your life,” Allison replies. She’s surprised how strong her voice sounds. 

“Well, yeah. But…that’s your mother, Allison!”

“Do you think I haven’t thought about that, Scott? I’ve thought about it, alright? I thought about it so much that I almost killed Derek at first, okay?” 

“¬¬But what about him biting Erica and Boyd and Isaac? What about that? Or him still letting Peter hang around even though he’s a murderer? Or him taking my one chance away to be cured and have a freaking normal life-”

Derek’s eyes shoot back up, towards Scott, with this look like things are clicking into place for him, but before Derek can say anything, Allison’s latched onto Scott’s words. “So this is about you, Scott?”

“No,” he says, more distraught then ever. “It’s about Derek being dangerous!”

“Hanging out with you wasn’t exactly the safest choice either.” 

“But I wasn’t the danger, though.”

“Couldn’t you have been? Let’s face it, Scott, you’re dangerous, Derek’s dangerous, I’m dangerous! We’re all dangerous!”

“You aren’t…,” Scott starts.

Derek doesn’t try to refute that Allison is dangerous and Allison knows that’s because, to him more than anyone, she is. She’s more dangerous than a girl who’s really good with a cross bow. She’s dangerous because somehow he’s become attached to her and because she’s an Argent and she’s Kate’s niece and because she kissed him and Allison thinks, maybe, just maybe, that kiss made him feel something.

“Go,” Derek says to Scott.

And so Scott does, but not without throwing one more desperate glance at Allison. She avoids looking at him. Soon she is there in Derek’s apartment, with just Derek and Peter. Derek is standing fairly still in the middle of the room, and Peter is looming near the doorway. 

“Well, I guess I should go,” she says, turning to exit.

“You don’t want to stay for tea?” Peter says, with a smirk. “I can make some tea.”

“Peter, leave,” Derek orders. 

Peter is muttering as he heads out the door.

It’s just Derek and Allison, now, in his apartment, and though they’ve always met alone, this feels different. This feels tense and kind of scary, and Allison wishes she could make her heart stop beating so fast because she knows he’s picked up on it.

“Sit down,” Derek says, gesturing towards his couch.

She does. He sits across from her.

“Allison, how did you know where I live?” His voice is surprisingly gentle for what she’s guessing is going to be an interrogation.

She fiddles with the bracelet on her wrist. “You mentioned it before, didn’t you?”

“No. I never have.”

She tries not to be offended by the confidence of that statement—by the fact that he’s purposely watched his words to keep this from her. She’s never been that purposeful at hiding things from him—not after the first few meetings, at least.

“I just found out, then, I guess. Heard it from somewhere.”

He’s staring at her. “There’s more to it than that.” 

“Okay, I may have been…researching.”

The researching started innocently enough. She had taken some of her father’s books about werewolves, hoping they would help her understand Derek better. Scott is a werewolf, sure, but he’s so thoroughly human—a regular teenage boy thrust into this world by some ill-fated bite. Derek is different. Derek’s whole background is defined by this—by being a werewolf. Almost as much as her whole family history, her whole life is shaped by being the daughter of hunters. The books were pretty biased, though, in the werewolves-are-monsters direction, so they didn’t give her much help. From there, she tried to pick up as much specific information as she could, and when she saw a scrap of paper on her father’s desk with an address at an apartment complex, she made a note of it. She isn’t sure why she was accumulating all that information, except wanting as complete and clear a picture of Derek as possible. 

“Allison.” He sighs.

“Derek, I know where you live. Not a big deal.” She wants to tell him that she won’t burn it down, but she holds it in. 

“I never got a chance to talk to you yesterday,” Derek says seriously. “About…our meetings.” 

He’s going to try to push her away. She feels it.

“Derek, what did I use your address for? I used it to warn you. Because I care about you. I didn’t use it for anything else. I didn’t use it to hurt you. I know that you have your limits. I know that. I know that, okay? I just want to be your friend, as much as you’ll let me. I’m not going to push you. I’m not going to push you even if I…”

Allison gulps, not wanting to continue the train of thought, not wanting to admit that some part of her—an increasingly growing part—doesn’t want to just be Derek’s friend, not in the long-term anyway. 

Derek doesn’t ask her to continue. He puts his hand on his forehead and breathes deeply. Allison braces herself for what’s next. Will it be direct? Will he admit that her researching him, her collecting information on him, reminds him too much of Kate? Will he admit that he can only trust her so much before he gets too scared and has to call off their friendship? 

Then he looks at her and says, “You want a coffee?”

“Uh, sure.”

He walks into the kitchen.

“That’s it? You wanted to ask me to have a coffee yesterday?”

“I think you know where I was going yesterday,” he says, as he pours her a cup. “But it’s not important.” He’s shaking his head. “Man, it should be. But it’s not.” Then he’s looking at her with that awed expression again, and it makes her feel warm. 

“I really am sorry for investigating you,” Allison says. “It makes sense for it to freak you out. I didn’t mean for it to be like-”

“I know,” he says. He strides back to where she’s sitting and hands her a cup of coffee. Their fingers touch, and she likes that. He goes back to the kitchen and pours himself an orange juice. “Caffeine doesn’t really impact werewolves the same way it does other people so I never really bother drinking it,” he explains.

“Then why the coffee?”

“Erica can’t get enough of it.”

Allison smiles a little, at imagining Erica here and Isaac and Boyd, at imagining Derek with this little family of his own. It pains her a little that she’ll probably never be able to hang out with them all together, after what’s happened. She thinks maybe one day she’ll be able to show them that she’s not such a bad person, and she thinks that day maybe she’ll believe that fully of herself—that her fears, which have eased up but still linger, will be entirely erased. 

“I really like your apartment,” Allison says. 

He smiles as he sits down in the chair across from her. “Best place I’ve stayed since getting back to Beacon Hills.”

She doesn’t want to imagine him staying in the Hale house, but she can see it so vividly. Derek huddled up in some corner among these broken remains of the life he used to lead. 

They’re both quiet for a little too long. 

“You know,” he says, and sips from his cup, “I’m too old for you anyway.”

She laughs because it’s the last thing she expected and she doesn’t know what else to do. 

“What? It’s true.”

“Oh, Derek, don’t make this into an age thing because I’m pretty sure I’m older than you think.”

“Oh, really?” he says, mockingly. 

“I’m turning eighteen soon.”

He starts to make fun of her, saying, “Oh, you’re ancient then.” Then, after a beat, he says, “Wait, you are?”

“Moving around a lot made school a bit complicated. I really should be going into my senior year.” 

“When’s your birthday?”

“What, you want to mark it on your calendar?”

“Maybe,” he says, hints of defiance and embarrassment at odds in his voice. Then he hurries to add, “Not that I want to know because of, uh, that—just, uh, because.” It really is ridiculous to think Derek’s older than her, when he’s sitting there squirming, more awkward and nervous than even Scott was on his first date with Allison. 

Allison walks over to his refrigerator, mostly to get a chance to look at his stuff a little more, and grabs the calendar that’s being held in place by some wolf magnet Allison is sure Erica, Isaac, or Boyd must’ve bought him. She flips through the calendar, noticing little things, like an upcoming dentist appointment and a car inspection. Allison circles her birthday and writes inside “Allison’s Birthday.” It’s on the same month where Isaac’s birthday is marked, and that pleases her a lot—to see both their birthdays there, like she could be a part of Derek’s life in more than this secret way, right alongside his pack.

“Allison,” he says. “You know someone’s going to see that.”

“Oh. Oh yeah. Um, I forgot. I guess I’ll just…” She rips off the page from the calendar and stuffs it into her pocket. “I’ll get rid of it.” 

“Let me copy down the dates from it first,” he says with a smile.

“Oh yeah,” she says, smiling back. So many things with Derek are in a state of not yet—his pack knowing they’re friends, her dad knowing, the possibility of them becoming more—and that sucks, but when he’s smiling at her, so warmly and openly, she thinks, well, not yet doesn’t mean not ever.


	12. Right Out There In The Parking Lot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That’s when Allison catches a glimpse of a shiny, sleek black car out the window, which gives a view of the side parking lot. It’s Derek, of course. He’s in the Camaro. Allison should’ve expected he would be lurking somewhere, in case something happened with the pack. 
> 
> “Derek,” she says. 
> 
> He turns his head immediately and Allison is thankful for his werewolf hearing. Derek smiles at her and waves, and in spite of that little scene in the hallway, she’s able to smile back at him. 
> 
> Well, she thought the smile was convincing, at least, but she isn’t so sure, since Derek’s expression turns to concern.

It’s the first day of junior year, and Allison is wishing she didn’t feel like puking. She is sitting in the passenger seat of her dad’s SUV in front of the school, and his hand is resting on top of hers. It’s not making her feel any better .

“Is that home schooling thing still an option?” Allison asks.

“Honey, you’re going to do great,” her dad says. “What are you worried about? Is it Scott?”

She thinks of Scott walking out of Derek’s apartment and how she could’ve gone after him, if she wanted. She could’ve tried to make him understand, but she hadn’t. She had stayed at Derek’s and drank coffee and talked for two hours. When she left, she had felt like she was being watched. She wouldn’t be surprised if Scott had just stayed outside, waiting to make sure she left in one piece. Running into him will be more awkward than ever—and things were bound to be pretty awkward before he knew about her blossoming friendship with Derek. 

The thought of seeing Derek’s pack, though—that makes her more nervous than anything.

Allison had asked how they hadn’t been able to pick up on her scent on him yet. He said they had no reason to pay attention for it, though if they had even the tiniest reason to suspect it, they would pick up on it right away. They just had to be paying attention. And it would even be easier for them to pick up Derek’s scent on her, since he was their Alpha. He suggested she stay as far away from them as possible. He also admitted they were still pretty impacted by the events from last spring, so she planned on following his advice.

“Yeah, mostly Scott,” Allison finally answers. 

“Exes can be hard to deal with,” her father offers. “But it’ll get better. You’ll both move on.”

Allison’s stomach lurches at the thought that she already has. She doesn’t like thinking that she’s moved on, but she can’t get it off her mind lately. Scott was her first love. She had thought they were going to be together the rest of their lives. And that was only a few months ago and now she was just…letting that go? Of course, Scott acting the way he did at Derek’s definitely helped in that regard. 

“Thanks, Dad. I guess I might as well get it over with.”

“You got everything?” he says, when she’s halfway out the door, and suddenly, her mind is back at her first day in Beacon Hills, sitting outside of the school, talking to her mom on the phone.

She had been so annoyed at her mom calling her again—she was a big girl, she could handle it—but her mom’s voice had soothed her when she was going to freak out about something so small as forgetting a pen. Allison misses her.

Her mother could be so fierce, almost chilling when she wanted to be, but there were other times when she was warm and gentle. Allison still isn’t sure how to reconcile those different parts—isn’t sure how to reconcile the woman who raised her with the woman who was intent on killing her first love. But she’s moved away, now, from trying to understand which sides and facets are true and which aren’t. She figures both sides were true, no matter how contradictory.

It’s just like how Allison could usually be so compassionate…but did some pretty terrifying things herself.

Just like Derek Hale could be some of those things she had suspected he would be—brutally pragmatic, rash, angry, closed off, damaged—but also sweet and surprisingly funny and good. Genuinely good.

“Allison,” her father says, a bit cautiously.

“Oh, sorry! I have everything. I’m good,” Allison says with her fakest smile. 

They say their goodbyes, and Allison goes inside to meet Lydia at her locker. She is surprised by how boring the walk there is, as if nothing’s really changed over the summer. She doesn’t run into Scott or Stiles or any of the pack, and nobody else has a reason to look at her any differently.

Lydia greets Allison with a judgmental look and a sharp, “That’s the outfit you chose for our first day back?” 

Allison rolls her eyes. “Thanks, Lydia. You look great too.”

Lydia does look great, as usual. She’s wearing skinny dark-washed jeans and a button-up blouse that looks a bit menswear-inspired, and her hair is in a messy braid. It’s casual enough compared to her usual outfits that it seems to be making a statement that she’s not out to impress their classmates, since they treated her like a pariah last year. Meanwhile, she looks fabulous enough in it that it will simultaneously impress everyone who sees her.

“You know I criticize because I love. And because I totally picked out an outfit for you yesterday and you ignored my advice.” Lydia is about to continue when her eyes go wide. “Uh, I think we need a code word.”

“A code word for what?”

At that moment, Scott and Stiles pass by. Neither looks at her. Stiles doesn’t even look at Lydia. She guesses this is for the best, though it doesn’t feel any less awkward. 

Allison groans. “Well, this is off to a fun start.”

“Cheer up,” Lydia instructs. “You want to know why he’s ignoring you? Because you have a hot older man.”

Allison shushes her.

“I’m just saying, there’s no need for pity parties. You’ve upgraded, hun.” 

“I’ve upgraded? First off, Scott seemed like enough of a catch for you when you made out with him in the coach’s office!” 

Lydia has the decency to blush. 

“Plus, I’m not even in a relationship with the guy! I don’t have him. And I don’t even know if he’s even capable of being in a relationship, let alone a relationship with me.”

The blushing is gone, and Lydia is waving her hand dismissively and saying, “Details,” as if she’s expecting Derek to be ready to call himself Allison’s boyfriend any day now.  
Then she grabs Allison and drags her off to find Jackson and Danny.

Besides the encounter with Scott and Stiles, everything feels surprisingly normal, and she thinks there may just be hope for the day after all. She says some silent thanks for Lydia to herself, even as Lydia starts strutting ahead of Allison and ordering her to keep up the pace. 

\--

The hope drains out of Allison between second and third period, when she’s exiting her classroom and sees the pack all gathered together in the hallway. Stiles is with them, but Scott isn’t, which Allison thinks is curious. She hopes it has nothing to do with her. 

She knows she should just hurry off to her next class, but she’s still so invested in them that she ends up observing them while drinking from the water fountain. All summer she’s heard Derek detailing the way they’ve been progressing, and she’s happy to see that Erica and Boyd both look a bit more comfortable in their skins than last semester. They are no longer clinging to each other. In fact, Allison thinks Erica’s actually interested in Stiles, judging by the way Erica keeps throwing glances his way and letting her arm brush against his when she moves. Then she sees Stiles’s fingers interlock with Erica’s, and her face breaks into this big smile, and Allison feels so warm about that and about the prospect of them as a couple. Derek never mentioned anything of the sort—in fact, he had told her he was a bit nervous about Boyd and Erica’s relationship and how that might impact pack dynamics—but she figures it would be the kind of development that would fly right under his radar. Plus, it doesn’t surprise her that his pack would have secrets of their own when he’s keeping his friendship with Allison a secret from them. Isaac, meanwhile, isn’t hovering quite so much. He looks sort of relaxed, actually.

Allison is happy for them.

They all say a few more words to each other before dispersing. Erica gives Stiles’s hand a tug before she walks away, and he smiles at her. Allison finally starts moving away from the water fountain. She doesn’t get that far because soon Stiles is tapping on her shoulder. 

“Hey,” she says. She smiles, though she’s sure her attempt at playing it cool is not fooling him.

“I saw that.”

“Saw what?”

“Saw what, Allison?” He laughs. “The very not subtle gawking you were doing, that’s what. Trust me, I’m very well practiced in the art form. I can identify it.”

“Stiles, I wasn’t-”

“I know you didn’t mean anything by it, but you’re lucky they didn’t notice, okay? Just—just leave them alone, alright?”

“I wasn’t planning on doing anything.”

“How am I supposed to know that? You’re BFFs with Derek now. You’re not exactly at your most predictable.”

“Okay, well, if I’m BFFs with Derek, then wouldn’t you assume I wouldn’t want to hurt the pack or Derek?”

“Not the point,” Stiles says. “And also, that’s only going by if you’re genuinely BFFs with Derek.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, Scott’s all worried that Derek is trying to get to you for some reason, which, you know, that could be true…but the reverse could be true too.”

“You think I’m trying to get to Derek?”

Stiles shrugs. “Why else would you be friends with Derek?” 

“Does nobody get that he’s, like, an actual person but me? An actual person who might benefit from friendship? ”

“Don’t get all holier-than-thou on me just because I never decided I wanted to have a slumber party in the Shrieking Shack.”

“The what?”

He sighs. “The Shrieking Shack, Allison. It’s a Harry Potter reference. Not important. Okay, I don’t really care if you’re friends with Derek or not. Well, except for the little fact that, you know, it’s killing my best friend.”

Allison huffs. “Stiles, that’s not fair.”

“That’s between you and Scott. But I do care if you being friends with Derek messes with Isaac and Erica and Boyd because that’s the last thing they need right now.”

“I’m not…I wasn’t going to do anything.”

This conversation is already making feeling like crap when she spots Erica coming around the corner. She’s actually, genuinely smiling, and Allison realizes how great she looks—better than she did right after her makeover, too, because initially, her face was always contorted into these trying-too-hard-to-be-sexy expressions. Then their eyes meet, and Erica’s face falls, and Allison knows, nothing is different, time didn’t change anything, she is still the enemy, she is still something for Erica to fear. 

She wants Derek to explain to them that she isn’t who they think. She wants Derek to tell them that he won’t hurt her.

“Stiles,” Erica says.

“Crap,” Stiles says, before turning around.

Erica is still feet away, but she won’t move any closer. “I…I forgot to tell you that Derek was going to take us for lunch off-campus so, um, we can’t meet.” 

Stiles walks over to Erica, and she grabs him by the sleeve and pulls him closer to her. She can tell Erica’s trying to be quiet, but her panicked, “What are you doing?” comes across crystal clear to Allison. 

Allison takes this as her chance to escape. She speed walks to the nearest bathroom. She’s lightheaded, and her stomach feels funny. She forces herself to breathe very deeply to calm down. 

She is sure she can’t take a whole year of this, with no hope of things changing. They have to change. They have to. 

Allison notices that she’s crying which makes her want to kick things. Instead, she tries to calm down by splashing her face with cold water from one of the sinks. Her distress begins shifting into anger. How dare Stiles! They may not be best friends or anything, but he should know her enough by now not to suspect the worst of her—enough not to talk to her like she’s some type of criminal. And that comment about killing his best friend? Not necessary! It isn’t like she’s trying to hurt Scott. She’s just trying to live her life. She’s fuming as she grabs paper towels from the dispenser.

That’s when Allison catches a glimpse of a shiny, sleek black car out the window, which gives a view of the side parking lot. It’s Derek, of course. He’s in the Camaro. Allison should’ve expected he would be lurking somewhere, in case something happened with the pack. 

“Derek,” she says. 

He turns his head immediately and Allison is thankful for his werewolf hearing. Derek smiles at her and waves, and in spite of that little scene in the hallway, she’s able to smile back at him. 

Well, she thought the smile was convincing, at least, but she isn’t so sure, since Derek’s expression turns to concern.

“I’m fine,” she says towards the window.

She wonders if he can hear she’s lying from where he is. She thinks he might because he’s still looking at her with his forehead all furrowed and worried. 

“Really,” she says. “Just…um, smile at me again.” 

He gives her this smile that’s confused and a bit alarmed, not the least bit natural (she thinks she probably shouldn’t have asked him to do that; her being so blatant about liking him clearly makes him uncomfortable) but she appreciates it nonetheless. She even tries to internalize it, let the feeling of it permeate through her, breaking up all the tension and worry. She may have actually succeeded because she feels ready to go back out and start the day. It’s comforting to know he’s right out there in the parking lot, even if she can’t go see him in public. 

“Thanks.”

She checks the mirror once, then heads for the bathroom door. She doesn’t let herself look back, as much as she wants to see Derek staring at her from his spot in the Camaro. Allison is worried she’ll look back and he will be looking away, and that would just spoil it.

\--

She crosses paths with Lydia and Jackson in the hallway, and they walk the rest of the way to Physics together. Allison initially thinks this will be a good distraction, but Jackson spends the whole time whining about how he doesn’t want to go to this mandatory pack lunch and how the rest of the pack is on drugs if they think he’s going to be part of their little misfit crew at school. Lydia mostly rolls her eyes a lot, and Jackson gets pouty. 

“You don’t even care we’re not going to eat our first lunch of junior year together?” 

Lydia shrugs. “I have Allison and Danny, I’m good.”

“I hate you.”

Lydia smirks. “No, you don’t.” 

“I hate the pack,” he says sullenly, before throwing an accusing glance in Allison’s direction.

“Well, yeah, maybe,” Lydia says.

They enter Physics class and are greeted by two unpleasant surprises: Erica, Isaac, and Boyd sitting at a lab table together and Mr. Harris up front by the chalkboard. Allison averts her eyes from the trio as she grabs a lab table with Lydia. Jackson goes to sit next to Danny, even though Erica is waving at him. 

“Head up,” Lydia whispers to Allison. “Don’t let them see you sweat.”

Allison rolls her eyes but follows the advice, holding her head a little higher.

Harris starts the class as soon as the bell rings. “You are all probably wondering why I’m your teacher, seeing as I was not listed on your schedules and my expertise is not Physics. I, personally, am wondering what on earth motivated me to wake up this morning knowing I would have to teach you all, but there are some mysteries that will never be solved, even by science. Now this school has a bit of a budgeting problem that’s indicative of our horrible American priorities—we’re more interested in buying lacrosse sticks than beakers—so when the Physics teacher quit this summer, they decided they would have me, a Chemist, teach you Physics until they find a suitable replacement…which I’m told will happen before your children graduate. Anyway, now we’re going to partner up.”

Immediately, people begin signaling each other. Lydia grabs Allison’s arm and smiles. Harris laughs derisively.

“You think I’m letting you all pick your own partners? I want work being done at my lab tables, not hormonal teenagers making out on top of them. I’m assigning partners.”

Allison’s stomach drops. What are the chances she’ll get partnered with one of Derek’s betas? There are three of them, so pretty high. She tells herself that maybe it will be a good thing—a chance to show whoever it is her true colors or something like that. That doesn’t take the nerves away, though, as Harris reads out the names. 

“Argent, you’re with Lahey,” Harris says.

Allison’s sick of not catching a break. But she remembers the bathroom window and Derek’s smile and somehow that counts for something. She remembers, as she goes to stand, that being so close to Isaac might mean him catching Derek’s scent. She looks at Harris. There’s no way he’s going to be convinced by some lame excuse and let her switch partners, so Allison does the only thing she can think of. She grabs Lydia and squeezes her tightly, hoping that Lydia’s perfume will be enough of a distraction to mask any lingering trace of Derek on her skin. 

“You know I love you,” Lydia says, “but what are you doing?” 

“A few more seconds,” Allison says, putting her face in Lydia’s hair.

“If you don’t take that public display of affection out of my classroom…,” Harris begins.

Allison takes a step away. “Sorry,” she says, before walking over to the lab table where Isaac is sitting. She grabs the chair that is close to him and pulls it farther from him before sitting down. Isaac scowls and rolls his eyes. Allison hadn’t meant for it to be insulting, but of course it came across that way. Now she’s not only some violent werewolf huntress bent on destroying his pack, she’s also a snobby lab partner. Just great. 

“Just so you know, I’m not thrilled about this either,” he says in a low voice. Isaac grabs the sheet of paper Harris passes out. Harris smiles at the pair because they’re the most distant and tense out of everyone. 

“Isaac, it’s not…I don’t have anything against you, Isaac. Really.”

Isaac laughs.

And she knows everybody’s told her not to bother saying sorry, that it’ll only make things worse, that she shouldn’t bother them, but Allison is here now, with Isaac. They have to interact. There’s no other choice. And if she’s interacting with him, she’s not going to let this apology go unsaid. 

She leans in without thinking. “Isaac, honestly-”

And that’s all she can say before his expression changes entirely and she knows she’s done for. He smells Derek.

“What are you doing?” he says, practically hissing. “Why have you been around him?” 

“I’m not doing anything, Isaac, I swear! Derek and I-”

“You’re trying to kill him. I know what you are, Allison. You’re an Argent. I’ve seen what Argents…I’ve seen what you are capable of.” 

“No, I’m really not. If you just let me explain-”

“I will do anything,” he says fiercely, “to protect them all. Anything.” 

“You don’t need to protect anybody from me!” 

At this point, Allison’s so frantic that she’s lost volume control, and the whole class is looking over at her and Isaac. “Let me explain,” she adds, quiet again, but Isaac is looking at her like he’s ready to bite her in half any moment. It’s useless. Everything’s useless. And now, Erica and Boyd will also know she’s been around Derek, and they’ll believe the same thing—that she’s out to get him, out to get them, and she can’t do anything about it. 

Allison stands. “Uh, Mr. Harris, I need to be excused.” Then she heads straight for the door. Harris opens his mouth, to tell her to sit back down probably, but Allison won’t let him get a word out. “I’m feeling sick and I really don’t want to puke in this room, so…”

Harris doesn’t say anything more, just nods, and Allison walks out of the room. Once she’s a few steps down the hall, she breaks out into a run. She’s still running once she’s in the parking lot. It seems urgent—that she gets to talk to Derek first, before any of the pack can say anything to him about it. She slips off her heels and holds them in her hand as she dashes towards the Camaro. When Derek sees her coming, he gets out of the car right away.

“Allison, what’s happening? Are you alright?”

She wants to say no. She wants him to hug her. Instead, she just says, “Isaac smelled it. You. Whatever. He knows. They’re all going to know.”

“I told you to stay away from them!”

“I have classes, Derek! You can’t blame me for having classes!”

“Teenagers,” he says dejectedly.

“You’re not helping.” Allison wraps her arms around herself. If this was Scott, he would’ve hugged her by now. He would’ve smelled her distress and he would’ve held her and it would’ve made her forget. 

Derek sighs. “Did you try to explain?”

“Do you think he’d believe me? He thinks I’m after you—after them!” Allison actually swats him because he has a proud look on his face. “That’s not nice.” 

“Well, it’s just good. That he’s being cautious.” 

“It’s good that his first instinct is mistrust?”

“That his first instinct is mistrusting an Argent.”

“Excuse me?”

Derek suddenly looks uncomfortable. “I just mean, not that he shouldn’t trust you, specifically, but as a general rule…”

“Wasn’t the whole point of talking to me for you about learning to trust? Learning to move past what happened? And now you’re proud of Isaac because he wouldn’t even give me a chance to explain myself!”

“I’m—you’re misunderstanding, Allison.”

“No, I’m understanding perfectly. I will still, at the end of the day, always be an Argent to you and this is just some stupid experiment and it was all going to end, anyway, when everyone found out, so let’s end it. Fine, then. I’ll go back to my life and you’ll go back to yours. Goodbye, Derek.” She slips her feet back into her heels and starts to turn away. 

He grabs her arm, and it’s gentle, and his voice is a little bit pleading when he says, “Allison, don’t be an idiot.”

“How can I stay mad at charm like that?” She's proud of how scathing and sarcastic she was able to sound.

“You know that I trust you more than I thought I ever could. You know that. But I wouldn’t trust you without getting to know you first, and I’ve gotten to know you, and they don’t know you. It makes sense for them not to trust you. Would you trust you if you were them?”

“I don’t know. I trusted you. I don’t have a great track record.” She’s angling her body away from him still. 

“And have I ever let you down?” he says seriously. 

She deigns to look him in the eyes and is frustrated to see them peering at her intensely—gorgeously. 

“No.” 

He breathes a sigh of relief—as if he expected a different answer. “I’ll make them understand. And they’ll get the chance. To know you. The trust will come later. It’s going to be fine, okay?” 

She wants to still be angry but he’s so much softer now, so much softer than Derek Hale, the big bad alpha, was ever supposed to be, and she can’t be mad, she just can’t. She nods. And then he does something strange. He tugs her a little bit closer, and Allison thinks this might be it. He might kiss her. But no, it’s a hug instead. A desperate, clingy hug, and through it, she feels how much he’s missed it—hugging, touching someone. It’s not a kiss, but it’s still great. 

“And it’s not over,” he whispers, and Allison thinks his voice is trembling a little. 

Also, she might be trembling a little. She doesn’t get it. She was so in love with Scott, but she’s never been this nervous about someone before. 

Before she can analyze it too much, she hears Isaac’s exasperated voice in the distance. “Seriously?” 

They let go of each other. Isaac, Erica, and Boyd are approaching, all looking scandalized. 

“Well, I think this is your chance,” Derek says. He pastes on an optimistic smile. “Want to go out for lunch?”


	13. Something Lasting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m sorry,” she says suddenly.
> 
> Everyone is looking at her, including Derek through the rearview mirror.
> 
> Allison had wanted to say it right away when Isaac, Boyd, and Erica approached, but Derek hadn’t given her the chance. He had, very assertively, told the betas that he and Allison had become friends over the summer and that she was going to lunch with them. Before Allison could add any in apologies, the betas started arguing with him, and Derek had pulled them off to the side where they all talked in hushed tones and made severe faces at each other until Derek announced that everybody was getting in the car.

Allison can’t believe where she is: sitting between Isaac and Boyd in the back of Derek’s Camaro; Erica had glared at her before taking the front seat. Isaac isn’t looking at Allison at all, Boyd is picking at a hangnail in what Allison’s sure is an attempt to look bored, and Erica looks back every few seconds to narrow her eyes in suspicion. Meanwhile, Derek fiddles with the radio. 

“What music are you guys into these days?” Derek says. “How’s this station?”

Allison runs her hand along her floral skirt, thinking about how much better this will be once she’s out of this car. 

Nobody answers Derek. He grips the wheel a little tighter and lets them sit in silence until Erica finally bursts: “This is ridiculous! Explain it to me again.”

“This summer Allison and I became friends,” Derek says, as if it were something simple and easy, something Isaac and Erica and Boyd should just swallow. If she didn’t feel so uncomfortable, Allison would’ve laughed because Derek’s never acted like it was so simple before.

“Friends like buddies or friends like you’ve been having secret sex all summer?” Erica says accusingly. 

Allison wants to snap that it’s none of her business, even if Erica has every right to be wary of her, but she can’t focus on her rage too long. She’s too busy watching Derek react. In his eyes, there’s a flicker of fear—of panic—before something dark settles over his face. Something angry.

“Allison and I are friends,” he says. “And you won’t say crap like that again.”

She groans. “You owe us more than that, Derek. You know you do.”

He looks away from her. Allison knows he owes her more. 

“I’m sorry,” she says suddenly.

Everyone is looking at her, including Derek through the rearview mirror.

Allison had wanted to say it right away when Isaac, Boyd, and Erica approached, but Derek hadn’t given her the chance. He had, very assertively, told the betas that he and Allison had become friends over the summer and that she was going to lunch with them. Before Allison could add any in apologies, the betas started arguing with him, and Derek had pulled them off to the side where they all talked in hushed tones and made severe faces at each other until Derek announced that everybody was getting in the car. 

“I’m sorry for what I did to you in the spring. All of you. My mom was dead, and I was furious, and my grandfather wanted me to channel that fury in your directions, and I did. Those aren’t excuses, honestly. It’s just the truth. I know what I did was wrong and it kills me to know what I did and how I’ve hurt you all. I’m sorry.”

“What did you do to us, Allison?” Erica cocks her head to the side. Her eyes are challenging. “You have to be more specific than that.”

Allison breathes deeply and tries not to hate Erica. She reminds herself how bitter and untrusting she would be in her shoes. “I was brutal and merciless and…I didn’t have to be those things; even for a hunter, the way I acted was out of line.”

“Even for a hunter,” Erica echoes, giving Derek a significant glance.

“I’m not—anymore—I’ve stopped,” Allison stammers.

And she knows then, sitting there in the car with them, what she’s known for a while now but hasn’t been able to say. Her training isn’t going to start again. She’s not a hunter anymore. She can’t be. 

There’s just the little matter of telling her father that. 

“If you were so sorry,” Isaac says, “why not tell us months ago?”

“I wanted to, but I didn’t want to make things worse. I thought it would be better to leave you alone. Derek told you, though, didn’t he?” 

“Derek told us that you were lurking around the Hale house and that when he caught you, you started apologizing and saying weird things about Boggle,” Boyd says.

“Wait, no, what? He mentioned Boggle!”

Boyd shrugs. 

Allison looks at Derek. He’s anxious, hands white as they tightly grip the steering wheel. 

“You were supposed to explain!”

“I—I hardly knew you then, and I told them what happened.”

Allison sighs. No wonder they’re still afraid of her if Derek made her apology sound so sketchy! 

“Then tell them now,” Allison says. 

“You just told them.”

Allison rolls her eyes. “Tell them that they can believe me!”

Derek gulps, and she thinks he’s about to not say it, which she can’t even believe at this point. How can he not say it—unless he doesn’t believe her himself? Allison reminds herself of everything that Derek has been through, about Kate, about promising not too push him too far…but this wouldn’t be too far, would it? She has a right to this, at least! 

Just as Allison’s getting worked up, he says it. Clear, final, adamant. Alpha-like. “You can.” 

And the betas must hear how deadly serious he is because they don’t argue. They don’t say anything at all.

Allison says, “Thank you,” and nobody reacts. She can’t believe she’s skipping on the first day of class—and on the notoriously brutal Mr. Harris!—to have an awkward lunch with mostly people who don’t like her. 

This is the first time it occurs to her that she’s skipping class. And not in a sneaking out type of way. In a blatant storming-out-of-class way. She wonders how Isaac, Boyd, and Erica all left. Obviously, Harris is going to assume they’re cutting together when none of them return. The last thing Allison wants is her dad to think she’s responding to all the trauma in her life by acting out in school. She can only imagine the lectures that are about to come…and all the new rules.

She almost wants to tell Derek to turn around and take her back, but then she notices that Isaac, who’d been crowded up against the window so as not to touch her, has relaxed a little in his seat. Allison doesn’t tell Derek turn around. Instead she tries to hide a smile. 

\--

The pack, plus Allison, is situated around a table at Wendy’s. Allison had offered to pay for her own meal, but Derek was picking up the tab for everyone. She is sitting next to him, with Erica on her other side. Boyd’s already eating his burger. Everyone else looks at their food, then each other, not speaking. 

“So,” Erica finally says, “we forgot Jackson.” 

“What?” Derek says. Then: “Crap. Someone text him and tell him not to be waiting around for us.” He puts his hand to his forehead. “The whole point of this lunch was-”

“Derailed?” Erica says. She has dutifully pulled out her phone.

Allison kind of wishes Jackson were here. At least that would be an ally.

“It was supposed to be a step towards integrating him into the pack,” Derek says. “This is just great. Like we weren’t having enough trouble with this already.” 

“We’re trying,” Isaac says. “He’s just…not interested.”

“Not that we’re very interested either,” Boyd admits.

Erica laughs. Allison tries not to smile thinking about how relieved Jackson’s going to be when he finds out he doesn’t have to spend his first lunch of junior year with the pack…though knowing Jackson, he’s also not going to take kindly to exclusion. 

“Allison,” Derek says desperately, “you know Jackson. How do I handle him?”

Allison is struck by the intimacy of his tone. It’s nothing different than when they’re usually together, really. But this is in front of his pack. She would think he’d have too much pride to ask her advice with them right there.

She opens her mouth to speak when Boyd says, “Oh, this is making so much more sense now. She got Jackson to join!”

Erica and Isaac look at Derek expectantly, and he gives them a guilty shrug. 

Erica crosses her arms. “Derek, I thought you said you persuaded him.”

“And you believed that?” Allison says. “He’s been trying for months, and the only thing it had Jackson convinced of was that Derek was creepy and that he didn’t want to grow up to be a werewolf that stalked teenagers.”

Erica stares at Allison, still skeptical, before deciding to smile. Then she turns to Derek. “Way to lie. Pathetic.”

Derek’s not amused. “Hey, watch your tone.” 

“Yeah, don’t make Derek go all Alpha on you,” Boyd says, wiggling his eyebrows in a show of personality that Allison hadn’t expected.

She laughs, and nobody looks at her like they want to rip her throat open with their teeth. Derek’s trying not to grin. He likes her laugh, Allison can tell, and that gives her a nice, satisfied feeling in her stomach 

“But anyway, Allison, suggestions?”

“Well,” she says, “he’s not going to want to hang out with the pack at school. No offense to you guys. But Jackson is very…specific about how he represents himself at school. It’s stupid but it’s Jackson. And he’ll want to be with Danny and Lydia most of the time anyway.”

“Yeah, but if he just shows up at pack meetings and leaves right after, that’s not pack!” Isaac says. “Pack is more than that.”

Allison thinks Derek’s expression is a mixture of pride and discomfort at the sentimentality. She starts eating a fry and thinks.

“What might help is if you got Lydia on your side.”

“Lydia?” Isaac says with a groan.

“Keep talking,” Derek says. 

“Right now Lydia sees the pack as a necessity to keep Jackson safe as a werewolf, which it is. But if she was convinced that the pack also could do more than that—be someplace he belongs—she would be the first one pushing him to be involved.”

Derek looks wary. 

“Also,” Allison adds proudly, “she’s a genius. And that could be helpful. If you ever need someone to translate archaic Latin or mix chemicals and blow something up, she’s your girl. Without her smarts, nobody would’ve known how to make the Molotov cocktail that killed Peter—well, I mean, he’s alive so I guess that doesn’t matter…” 

“We also forgot Peter,” Erica says.

Nobody looks too disappointed about that.

“I’m not sure getting Lydia involved is the best idea,” Derek says.

“Why not?”

“Well, first off, I don’t know if she could withstand being around Peter. I know what type of trauma he caused her, it was sick. And she’s immune, Allison. I’ve tried to get Peter to tell me what that means and how she is, but he won’t. But it’s something powerful. And if she’s involved with the pack, other people will take notice. They’ll find out about her immunity and try to use it.” 

“People knew about her immunity without her being involved in the pack. Peter knew. And Peter did all that to her when she wasn’t involved in any of this. It would be safer for her if you all did have her back. And maybe—well, maybe it’s time that Peter…” Allison knows it’s not the time to get into the whole Peter issue, not surrounded by the betas who are all leaning in, waiting for her to let a bomb drop. 

Her pause is enough for Derek to know where she’s going. “We’re not talking about this,” he says.

Allison sighs. “Fine, let’s just focus on Jackson. I can try to come up with some other ideas if you’re going to be so stubborn about it.”

They brainstorm ideas on how to include Jackson more, they meaning Erica, Boyd, Isaac, and Allison. Erica, Boyd, and Isaac don’t even seem to mind that this means talking to Allison, that’s how eager they are to gloss over the Peter situation. Meanwhile, Derek sits there, visibly jarred, eating chicken nuggets. 

The whole group is enthused about the idea of going to the lacrosse game with “GO JACKSON” signs. 

“I love lacrosse!” Erica says. “Doesn’t that sound like a good idea?” 

She pushes Derek, and he continues silently nibbling at a chicken nugget. Erica exchanges helpless glances with Isaac, shoulders rising so slightly it’s barely a shrug. 

Allison can’t take it anymore.

“Derek, you know I came here because you asked me to!” 

“I know that.” He’s pouting at his soda.

“So just because I think that keeping Peter around isn’t the best idea-”

“I said not to talk-”

“About that, I know, but guess what, Derek? You aren’t my boss, okay? And sometimes I have to say things you don’t want to hear.” 

“That doesn’t mean I have to listen.” Derek stands and starts to walk away. 

“Where do you even think you’re going?”

He turns back and snatches a handful of fries from one of the trays in the middle of the table, then continues his angry swagger out. Allison watches him out the window and sees that he’s switched to a more sulky walk once out the door of Wendy’s. She looks back at the pack, expecting them to be horrified at her for daring to be so cruel to their beloved Alpha, but they’re all looking at her sympathetically. She blinks. This can’t be right. But nope, none of them are rushing to defend Derek or condemn her.

“So that went terribly,” Allison says quietly.

“I hate Peter,” Erica says. “He’s creepy.”

“Real creepy,” Isaac adds. 

“Yeah, once Isaac found out the whole story from Scott, we’ve been ready for Peter to go,” Boyd says. “He tries to act really buddy-buddy with us, and we’ve been pretending well enough, but I think Derek knows we don’t trust him.”

“So you guys don’t think I’m horrible for what I said?” Allison asks.

They all shake their heads.

“Better you than us,” Boyd says.

Erica strokes her chin. “Horrible for other things maybe…but for that, no.” Isaac and Boyd both glare at her. “Okay, fine, if you haven’t been picking up on it already, Argent, I guess we don’t totally hate you. It’s in the past, alright? It’s not like we all make the best decisions. And we figure—well, I figure at least—that it has to mean something that Derek sounded more confident telling us to trust you than he has ever, ever sounded about Peter.”

Allison is thrilled. She holds onto the table, trying to contain herself, but she wants to scream because this is it, this is the acceptance of her apology that she thought would never come. It’s not exactly an offer of best friendship, but it’s an acceptance and that makes everything so much better…that is, if Derek still wants anything to do with her after this.

And if she wants anything to do with him, considering his attitude and poor conflict resolution skills. 

“And Derek’s been happier,” Isaac adds. “We didn’t know why but I guess it makes sense now.”

Then all of her feelings rush back, and Allison knows it can’t end now. Derek’s happier. Because of her. She realizes, then, that she’s happier too. The end of last school year she was miserable, not only with grief but over who she thought she was. Now things are different. Now she isn’t so worried she’s the worst person in the world. Now she isn’t a hunter. Now she’s Allison Argent who lunches with werewolves and is friends with Derek Hale, and this person is someone she likes more than the Allison who shot those arrows into Boyd—a lot, lot more. 

She’s thinking about just how big Derek’s role in that happiness has been and how it’s been so important that he understands her when understanding dawns on her about the Peter situation.

“Thank you so much. I promise that I’m not conning you or out to get anyone, I’m on your side, and you won’t regret it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go talk to Derek.” 

Allison grabs a fry and rushes out of Wendy’s. She doesn’t need werewolf super hearing to catch Erica going, “Bets on them actually dating, anyone?”

\--

“Hi,” Allison says. She’s maintaining a distance of a few feet. 

Derek is leaning against the side of the Camaro with his hand in his pockets. He ate the fries already. He doesn’t say anything. 

“So I think I get it.”

“Yeah?” he says skeptically. 

“Why you’re the way you are about Peter. I think I get it. I know that you don’t trust him either, Derek, and that you still have to be mad at him for the things he’s done, but he’s your family.”

She doesn’t bring up Kate, though she wants to. She thinks about it sometimes—what would happen if Kate were resurrected, how she would respond. She’d know, deep down, that she was evil, but having her there, in person again…Allison wonders if she would give her a chance to be in her life again. 

Derek sighs.

“I’m not sorry,” Allison says. She wants to make that clear since Derek is the one behaving like a child here, not her, and she’s not going to say sorry all the time just to placate him, though it’s tempting to do it just to see him happy because somehow she’s become hugely invested in his happiness. “But I understand that it’s rough for you to talk about, and I understand that you think he’s the only family member you have left.”

Derek laughs. “I think, Allison? Flames might be a bit more permanently damaging than you’re imagining.”

She sneers. “What I’m saying, Derek, is that in that Wendy’s I’m pretty sure you have a family waiting for you. So if you really can’t trust Peter, which I don’t think you can, or if it would be better for the pack for Peter not to be around you all anymore, there’s no reason for you to keep clinging onto him. You have family.” 

Derek opens his mouth to argue. Allison cuts him off because she knows just what he’s going to say—that Erica and Boyd left, that Isaac could leave at anytime, that they stay with him because it’s the smart thing to do, not because they’re family. 

“They love you,” she states plainly. “I’ve hardly been around them, but I can tell.”

“That’s not love. That feeling you have for your Alpha—that’s instinct.”

“Well, then, in this case, it’s instinctively love, Derek. But hey, what do I know? I can’t smell people’s feelings. Just…do what you think is best about Peter, okay? Just know you don’t need him, alright? You have them and they care about you, and you have me, and we’re going to be as much of a family to you as Peter can be, if not more.” 

The look in his eyes is hard, but Allison doesn’t mind. She knows it’s because she included herself in that configuration of family, but she’s not going to back down from it. 

Nobody would deal with Derek Hale, baby with poor conflict resolution skills and inconceivable heights of emotional damage, like she is for the sake of casual friendship. There’s something lasting there. He can deny it, but she won’t.

Finally, his expression softens. 

“It’s hard…to have a Hale come back and it’s not…well, let’s just say he wouldn’t have been my first choice.”

She gets closer now. “I’m sorry you have to deal with all of this. I don’t know if I’d know what to do if I were you either.” 

“Thanks,” he says. “For…” His voice trails off, and she knows that he’s not going to finish that sentence. 

Instead he goes to hug her, but Allison stops him, hands pressed firmly against his chest. She jerks her head backwards. “I don’t think you want them getting any ideas that this is something that…well, it isn’t.”

“Oh. Yeah, right. Sure,” Derek says. He puts his hands glumly in his pockets.

“Stop pouting.” She sticks her tongue out, just a little. “We’ll hug later.” 

“I don’t pout,” Derek says as they walk back to the Wendy’s.

That has Allison laughing until they get back inside. And though she’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to, Derek smiles.


	14. I Want To Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia struts past Erica, very pointedly not looking at her.
> 
> Erica rolls her eyes, and Allison walks over to Erica.
> 
> “Hey.” Allison tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “What’s up?”
> 
> “Peter’s gone.”

A lot of things change pretty quickly after that lunch at Wendy’s, the first being things with Allison’s father.

After Derek drops them off at the school, Allison, Erica, Boyd, and Isaac all go their separate ways to class. Only ten minutes have gone by when their names are rattled off together on the overhead speakers, with an instruction to report to the office. For a second, it makes Allison feel like a part of the pack—like they’re comrades—until she’s mostly just uneasy. She hates being in trouble and she hates worrying her father and this is going to do both.

In the hallway, she runs into Erica who actually smiles at her. Allison and Erica start walking side-by-side.

“Should’ve expected this, huh?” Erica says. “The good thing is, my parents basically gave up on me after I ran away last year, so nobody will really care if I skipped class.”

“You didn’t tell them what happened?”

Erica shrugs. “I really was running away. There was just a little more to it than they thought.”

“I’m sorry,” Allison says.

“Don’t be. I thought, you know, that things would get better…with my parents…when they had a healthy daughter, but a healthy daughter’s not the same as a good daughter.”

Allison isn’t sure what to say.

“Derek, Isaac, and Boyd,” Erica continues, “they’re my real family anyway.”

Allison nods at her and hopes it looks supportive.

Then Erica says, “So you get…why I’d be protective.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“And if you were, hypothetically, just using someone as a rebound from a certain Scott McCall—”

“Erica.”

“Hey, I might be talking about Boyd. Or Isaac. Or anyone! Just—remember we have claws, alright?” Erica holds up her hand and wiggles her fingers at Allison. They aren't claws right now—just normal, teenage girl hands, with long fingernails painted gold.

“You’re threatening me?”

Erica grins. “Can’t overhaul our whole relationship in one day, Argent.”

They enter the office together and give the secretary their names. The secretary tells them to wait. The pair turns around towards where Isaac and Boyd are already sitting. Allison smiles at them sympathetically before sitting down.

A few silent minutes go by, and then the door to the principal’s office opens—with both the new principal and Allison’s father in the doorway.

Crap.

“Allison, can you join us in here?” says the new principal, Mrs. Oliver.

Her father looks more worried than severe as Allison makes her way into the office. She isn’t sure if she should take that as a good or bad sign. The principal sits behind her desk, and Allison and her father sit in the two chairs set widely apart.

“Allison, you know what we’re here to talk about,” Mrs. Oliver says.

Allison glances at her father and is surprised to find him staring at her.

“Yes. And I’m so sorry. It was a very poor decision. I’m normally a very good student. I know you don’t know me, but if you check my records-”

“You aren’t in trouble, Allison,” Mrs. Oliver says.

She breathes a sigh of relief.

“And I’ve checked your records and talked to your father. That’s what makes it so troubling, that you would act out like this on your first day back at school.”

Allison gulps.“It’s really not-”

“The school offers grief counseling, Allison, and I think it would be very valuable for you.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Allison says.

“I do,” Mr. Argent says.

“Ms. Morrell is very good at what she does,” Mrs. Oliver adds.

“I’m fine.”

“If you’re fine,” Mrs. Oliver says, “then you can be in detention the rest of the week with Erica, Isaac, and Boyd. If not, just take one appointment with Ms. Morrell and see where things go from there.”

“I don’t need grief counseling.”

“Allison, you went through the death of two family members,” her dad says. “You don’t need to pretend that you’re too strong-”

“I don’t?” Allison laughs. “You do know how you raised me, right?”

She doesn’t know why she’s being so mean. Only that it feels like a better option than really having to face her father.

Her father is in shock, and Mrs. Oliver awkwardly, or maybe respectfully, bows her head and concerns herself with papers on her desk.

“Allison, I told you that you needed someone to talk to about everything-”

“Yeah, and that someone wasn’t you, was it? And I found someone. I’m working through things. I don’t need counseling. Thank you very much, though, for offering, Mrs. Oliver. It was very kind of you, but if you wouldn’t mind, I’d just like to be put down for detention please.”

“Uh, sure. After school today, then.”

“May I go now?”

Mrs. Oliver looks sympathetically at Mr. Argent, then nods. Allison stands, and her father’s arm reaches across the chasm and grabs hers.

“No, actually, you can’t. We need to talk.”

“I already missed one class, Dad. I probably shouldn’t miss another.”

Her father looks to Mrs. Oliver. “She’ll be so attentive for the rest of the year that she’ll make up for it.” Then he adds, exchanging his worry for charm, “You have my guarantee.”

Mrs. Oliver’s gaze is appraising, and Allison shudders. She’s seen people check out her father. She’s even seen Lydia flirt with him. But it’s different with her mother out of the picture. Different when it’s a beautiful, serious, professional woman like Mrs. Oliver with short, curly hair that looks enviably soft, even to Allison.

“Take all the time you need.” Her voice has taken on a silkier quality. “Allison’s well-being is the priority.”

Her father grabs her by the shoulder and steers her out of the room. Erica and Boyd both nod their heads respectfully at Mr. Argent when he passes. Allison’s surprised to see him attempt to half-smile at them. Maybe things won’t be so bad, after all.

They’re both silent as they make their way through the hallway to the SUV in the parking lot.

“Where are we going?” Allison finally asks, as she clicks her seatbelt shut.

“We’re staying right here. You want to tell me what you were doing skipping class with Derek’s pack?’

“I…I wanted to apologize to them. For what happened last year. I wanted to talk things through.”

“I don’t want you involved with them.”

“Why? They’re not bad, Dad.”

“You know why. You know they’re dangerous. Their lives are dangerous.”

“You were okay with my life being dangerous when we were an unstoppable hunting family. You were okay with my life being dangerous when I was training to kill them.”

“I wasn’t…I wasn’t training you to kill them.”

“You were training me to kill eventually. Right?”

He doesn’t say anything.

“And you know, I’ve been thinking …I don’t know if I want you to start training me again. No, I don’t mean that. I know I don’t want you to start training me again. I know I don’t want to be a hunter. I want to be—” Allison’s voice falters as she thinks of all the things she could say that her father would find silly. The mediator between hunters and werewolves. An ambassador of sorts. Derek’s girlfriend. “I don’t know what I want to be, but I don’t want to be a hunter.”

Her father sighs. “I get it. It’s alright.”

“Really?”

“I told you before, I want what’s best for you, Allison.”

“I know. I just…I don’t want to let down the family name or something like that.”

He cups the back of her head with his hand. “You couldn’t do that…unless you skip class again.”

Allison smiles.

“You’re not going to listen to me, though. About the betas. Are you?” her father says. “Just like you didn’t listen to me about Scott.”

Allison sighs. “Dad-”

“You protect yourself,” he says fiercely. “And if you get in over your head, you tell me. Don’t let anybody convince you the situation will be worse if you say something. It won’t be. Do you understand?”

Allison nods. “So you’re going to let me be friends with them, then?”

He sighs and leans back in his seat. “I don’t know if it’s a matter of ‘let’ with you anymore.”

She smirks.

“You used to be such a daddy’s girl, you know.”

“Still am.” She kisses him on the cheek. “And I won’t skip class again.”

“You better not,” he calls after her as she exits the SUV.

She looks back and smiles. Although it’s not like she’s come close to telling him everything, she does feel lighter, slightly more carefree, hearing him say it’s okay that she won’t be a hunter, hearing him, even, accept (however begrudgingly) that she’s adding more werewolves to her social circle.

Actually, she feels more like a teenage girl than she has in months.

Maybe that’s why she lets herself think of Derek the whole time she walks inside. Stupid, little fantasies of stupidly beautiful Derek stroking her hand, running his fingers through her hair, kissing her back like he’d refused to do before. And she doesn’t even let her thoughts stay on the implausibility of her fantasies. She just thinks about how nice they are.  
\--

Next, things change with Scott.

It’s gym class, and Allison is calming down Lydia by the bleachers.

“That was a foul! Finstock cannot tell me that wasn’t a foul! It was a foul! You saw it, right? That was a foul!” Lydia says.

Allison rubs her shoulders. “Lydia, I think you need to take this a little less seriously.”

“You were the one who told me I wasn’t too cool to try in gym class! You should’ve been ready for the results. We go to school with deceptive, cheating barbarians, Allison.” She adds curtly, “Also, I think we have a visitor.”

Allison turns around. Scott’s standing there, looking—she has to admit—cute in his gym shorts and gray T-shirt.

“Hey,” he says sheepishly.

Lydia, who heard all about Scott’s over-protectiveness earlier that day, purses her lips at him and turns up her nose. “Shouldn’t you be playing with Stiles?”

“Finstock heard about the free donuts in the teacher’s lounge, so I figured now would be a good time to talk, Allison. If you want to talk to me, that is.”

“Um, a few minutes, I guess, would be fine.”

Lydia sighs and rolls her eyes. “I’m going to go destroy a girl with tacky glitter eye shadow and no sportsmanship, excuse me.”

Allison bites her lip. She doesn’t particularly want to talk to Scott. She doesn’t even want to think about Scott. Not when everything has taken a suddenly positive turn. “So….,” she says.

“So. About what happened with Derek-”

“You realized that it’s none of your business and you’re going to leave it alone?”

Scott scratches at his forehead. “That’s not how I meant things to go.”

“Yeah, because you didn’t think I would show up.”

“Am I supposed to have expected you would go to Derek’s apartment? I didn’t know you even knew where Derek’s apartment was.”

“Well,” Allison says, “I knew. And this isn’t sounding like an apology.”

Scott sighs. “The most important thing to me is that you’re safe.”

“I don’t need that to be the most important thing to you.”

“But it is,” Scott insists. “That’s why, well…I got to thinking about Derek, and, um, well, don’t tell him I said this—oh, that’s still so weird to think about, that you would be telling Derek anything-”

There’s an edge to Allison’s voice as she asks, “The point?”

“My point is, after all that happened, I started thinking about Derek and how he’s saved my life, like, a couple times. And for everything that’s wrong with the guy—which is a list I could give you, if you’re interested—I guess, I believe that he wouldn’t hurt you and that he’d try his best to keep you safe. So even though I hate it, there’s not actually an issue…”

“Scott, if you think you need to give me permission—”

Scott groans. “No. Ugh. Allison. I just. It’s hard for me to talk to you and not be an idiot. After everything.”

He looks do distressed that Allison can’t keep the softness out of her voice when she says, “I understand.”

“And my point wasn’t giving you permission. My point was that, uh, I’ll leave you alone. You and Derek. I respect you, Allison, and I just want you to be happy.”

Finstock appears with a donut hanging out of his mouth. He lets out a garbled call of, “McCall! Argent!” Scott turns to dash over to where Stiles is dribbling a basketball. Allison grabs Scott by the arm. She lets out an, “Um,” without meaning to before wrapping her arms around him in a hug.

He’s squeezing her back. It’s warm, and there’s no hesitation on Scott’s behalf, like there usually is with Derek. What strikes her, though, is how very, very familiar it feels, even though it’s been months since they’ve hugged like this. She wants this. She misses this. Having Scott…having someone.

Finstock shouts at them again, more clearly because he’s swallowed his donut.

Scott smiles and runs off,. Allison expects to be still trying to recover from that hug, but his touch doesn’t linger.  
\--

Sometimes during their week of detention, Erica, Isaac, and Boyd talk to Allison. They smile at her, even joke with her a little, and it’s still new enough that Allison finds it a refreshing change.

Still, that doesn’t make the incident a week later any less weird. Allison is walking to her locker, Lydia laughing by her side. Then Lydia stops dead beside her. That’s when Allison notices Erica leaning against her locker, her fingers hooked in the loops of her black leather pants.

“What is she doing?” Lydia says.

“I don’t know.”

“She does know that I’m your best friend, right?”

Allison giggles. “You’re jealous?”

“No. No. I’m just…whatever. Go see what she wants. I’ll see you in English.” Lydia struts past Erica, very pointedly not looking at her.

Erica rolls her eyes, and Allison walks over to Erica.

“Hey.” Allison tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “What’s up?”

“Peter’s gone.”

“What?”

“Isaac heard Peter and Derek yelling last night. Then they realized Isaac was listening and went somewhere else. Isaac looked around this morning, and he saw that all Peter’s stuff is gone. He called me, and I went over, and it’s true. Peter left.”

“Maybe he’s just moving into his own place,” Allison says. “Or went away temporarily.”

Erica shakes her head. “I don’t think so. I think he’s gone-gone. For real gone. Derek-kicked-him-out type of gone.”

“Wow,” Allison says.

She’s not sure what else to say. She can’t believe that Derek actually did it. She’s sure, if what Erica says is accurate, it must be killing him.  
“I know,” Erica says. She can’t hide the glee in her voice. “Anyway, I figured you should know.” Erica glances at her cell phone. “I should go find Stiles. I’ll see you around?”

“Uh, yeah, sure.”

Erica waiting at her locker…wanting her to be informed about something important….Allison can practically feel them becoming friends. She’s surprised by how excited that makes her. She likes Erica. She likes her boldness and her strength and her willingness to say what other people won’t.

“Wait!” Allison says.

Erica turns around, confused.

“So what’s the deal with you and Stiles? Are you two together or-”

Erica smirks. “Come on, Allison. Do you think I’m pathetic enough that I need to kiss and tell?” She winks at Allison before turning around and continuing to walk away.

Allison smiles. They’re friends, they really are. Maybe even good enough friends that, later, Allison will be able to get some more details from Erica about her relationship with Stiles. She’s kind of fascinated by the pair of them together, though she supposes that make some weird kind of sense. They’re each a force to be reckoned with, really…in their own, distinct ways. And she’s happy for Stiles. She figures it must’ve been lonely for him, all that time she and Scott were together.

A voice at the back of her head says, Now Scott’s the lonely one, and she feels a flash of guilt about him being lonely, him probably still loving her, while she develops feelings for Derek. She reminds herself that things with Scott are better now. They no longer avoid each other in the halls. They wave, and they smile, and they’ve been making small chat. She has nothing to be sorry about.

After that, she’s back to feeling good about being friends with Erica and about Peter being gone because she’s so sure it’s right for the pack and that it’s right for Derek too. She worries, of course, that it’s killing him now, but she’s too ecstatic about all the possibilities in front of her to dwell too much on Derek’s emotional trauma.

When Allison gets to English, Lydia notices she’s grinning and groans. “I’m not losing my best friend to a she-wolf. If she gets you some tacky friendship bracelet, I swear…”  
\--  
As the day goes on, Allison’s happiness fades as she thinks more and more about how Derek must be coping. Peter was the only family he had left by blood, after all, and though Allison knows he made the right choice, she’s aware it wasn’t the easiest one. She decides by her fourth class that she has to do something to distract Derek. Her first instinct is junk food and movies, but Derek eats way too healthy for that and would probably sit through whatever stupid comedy Allison rents without laughing once. She figures something physical might be better, like going for a run. Something that wouldn’t require talking—as much as she’d love to make him sit down and pour out all his Peter-related feelings for her.

During lunch, Jackson and Lydia are bickering about who made them late for their reservation last night and Danny has fallen into referee mode. Normally Jackson and Lydia arguing just makes Allison feel tense, but just this once, it’s welcome, since it gives Allison a chance to spend the period lost in thought. By the end of lunch, she decides that she’s going to teach Derek archery. Not that he really needs it…but she thinks it would be a good distraction.

After school, she heads home first to grab some cash so she can treat the pair of them to food afterwards. When she opens her bedroom door, Derek is sitting at her desk chair. She’s slightly startled but not surprised enough to jump.

“Sorry,” Derek says, before she can say anything. “I know that you don’t like the whole-”

“Breaking in thing?” Allison smiles and sits down on her bed. “Actually, you saved me the trouble of going to your apartment.”

“You were coming?”

Allison nods. “But that’s not important. What’s up?”

“I wanted to tell you…uh, I talked to Peter yesterday. He won’t be around anymore, so, uh, if you wanted to hang out more…around the apartment and with the pack and things…well, you’d be able to.”

“Are you asking me to?”

“No,” Derek replies quickly. “I’m just thinking of what you’d want, alright?”

“Oh yeah, sure you are.”

“I am!” She smirks at him, and he sighs. “Alright, the whole having-you-around more as a consequence of kicking Peter out…I mean, I wouldn’t mind it.”

Allison rolls her eyes.

“Anyway,” Derek says, “why aren’t you more surprised?”

“By you wanting me around?”

“No, about me getting rid of Peter.”

“Erica told me earlier today. Which was why I was going to come over. I figured you needed a distraction.”

“What kind of distraction?” he asks. There’s an edge to his voice that sounds a little bit like fear.

Allison thinks he’s picturing something a bit more physical than she had in mind. Of course, now that’s the only thing on her mind, and Derek suddenly seems way too tantalizingly close, and she’s on edge at them being here alone, in this empty house, in her bedroom when some very large percentage of herself wants to launch herself at him but she can’t, she knows she can’t, because some small percentage of him wants to kiss her back, she’s sure, but a much bigger percentage would push her away, utterly terrified, because it’s not their time, not yet anyway, and they’d lose all the progress they’ve made.

She tries to keep her voice steady as she says, “Well, I was going to teach you how to rock a crossbow.”

He laughs. “You do know I’m a werewolf, right?”

“I’m aware. I just thought it would be…you know, fun.”

“I don’t do fun,” Derek says, in a voice full of mock-seriousness.

“Not even for me?”

He shakes his head, but he’s smirking. Sometimes it’s still weird for Allison to see him—Derek Hale—teasing. Practically on the edge of flirting. She wonders if he understands how often he toes that line. She hopes he might be doing it on purpose.

“So you’ll listen to me about your terrifying uncle but won’t let me teach you archery?” Allison says. “I see how it is.”

“You know,” he says, “about that, thank you for what you said last week. If you hadn’t said it, I don’t think I would’ve.”

Allison blushes. “I was just joking. You had your own reasons. You don’t need to thank me.”

“No. I do. You made the whole issue pretty clear. The pack and…uh, the pack is my family. And you know, I’ve lost family and I’ve—”

“It’s not your fault,” Allison says. Quickly. Adamantly.

Derek doesn’t acknowledge that. He’s stopped looking at her now. “I’ve lost family and I’m going to do everything in my power to protect the family that I do have now. I know I haven’t done such a great job of that, but I’m going to. And I wasn’t protecting them by keeping Peter in our lives when I’ve always been aware that there’s the possibility he’ll turn on me at any second.” He forces himself to look her in the eyes, and it’s some of the most intense eye contact they’ve ever shared. “Thank you.”

“Uh,” Allison says. “You’re welcome. I’m…you know I’m proud of you, right?”

“I guess I do now.” He stands. “So. Archery, huh? Let’s get this over with.”

Allison grins and stands as well. “Yes! You are not going to regret this!”

“You’re already making me question that,” he says very dryly.

“I need to get supplies. You stay here and be quiet and avoid the windows in case my dad gets home.”

“Allison, I’m not an idiot.”

“Sorry that I forget what an expert creep you are.”

He laughs a little. She heads for the door, and he grabs her arm gently. “Leave the wolfsbane-tipped arrows in the drawer, alright?” Derek says.

Allison is not actually sure to what extent he’s joking. “You don’t think I’d do that, would you?” She tries to keep her tone light.

“No,” he says. He looks very serious for an instant, then he’s smiling at her again. “You know what, I’m pretty impressed…that Erica bothered to tell you about Peter. She must really like you.”

She looks down at his hand on her arm, and he looks down, and in the same moment, both seem to realize that his thumb is rubbing gently against her pale skin. He drops his hand and shoves it into one of his pockets.

Allison shrugs. “I actually think she might. I’m glad to be her friend. I like her.”

“Good,” Derek says.

Allison feels something suspiciously similar to that little surge of pride and relief when she realized, last year, that Scott’s mom liked her. As she heads downstairs, she reminds herself that she and Derek are not in any way dating….although, honestly, as she thinks about him waiting there for her upstairs, she’s not sure what else to classify this as.

The rest of the afternoon, she keeps thinking of the word "friendship," but it doesn't seem to fit these ideal hours they spend together in the woods. It's not what she feels as she's teaching him archery, getting little chances to touch him as she adjusts his stance and the position of his arms. It's not what she feels as he plays at being grouchy and makes cocky statements but can't hide how impressed he is by everything she does. It's certainly not what she feels when they do end up renting a stupid comedy and watching it afterwards while eating bowls of strawberry ice cream. Even when the pack, minus Jackson, crashes halfway through the movie, and they have three beta werewolves sitting between them, she can't line up what's happening with just friendship. Not when Derek sneaks looks at Allison every chance he gets, to share an eye roll at something, to express a silent apology over something Erica says. The way Erica winks at her when Derek isn't looking also doesn't help make things seem any more platonic.

When it's time to go home--Boyd's driving her because Derek and Allison walked in the afternoon and Derek doesn't want to risk Mr. Argent seeing him drop Allison off-- Derek gives her a quick hug as Erica, Boyd, and Isaac watch.

"Have a good night," Derek says.

"You too. And, you know, if you get to thinking about things and need someone to talk to....well, I'll be up for a couple more hours."

"Nope. Not gonna stop you from getting your sleep. You have school tomorrow."

Allison rolls her eyes. "I have a dad, you know."

"Yeah, one who has enough reason to kill me. I'm not going to responsible for you skipping class and for you falling asleep in school. Nope."

"Whatever, Derek. Have a good night," she says. "And thanks...for going along with today. It was fun."

"Yeah." He smiles. "It was. Thanks."

Allison is torn between complete bliss and excruciating impatience with the whole situation as she walks with Boyd out to Derek's Camaro. He gets in the driver's seat and she gets in the passenger's seat. They're quiet as he starts the car and pulls out of the apartment parking lot. Allison decides to ask Boyd about how he likes his classes so far, and Boyd answers cordially. He really is the most well-adjusted out of all the werewolves she knows, Allison thinks. Besides Scott, maybe.

When they pull up to Allison's house, Allison starts thanking him when he says, very matter-of-factly, "Give him time, Allison."

"Oh," is all she says at first because she can't pretend she doesn't know what he's talking about or that he's mistaken. She can lie, but she's not that good. And Boyd is sharp. After a second she adds, "Yeah, yeah, I will. Thanks," before heading inside, thinking that if she's not sure Boyd's the sanest werewolf she knows, he's at least the most insightful.


	15. Scott's Seventeenth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You shouldn't feel guilty for going,” Lydia says.
> 
> “I know that. I just-I don't know. I have a bad feeling.”
> 
> “So what if Derek sits around the apartment feeling angsty for a night? How is that much different than most nights?”
> 
> Allison glares at Lydia. “It's not just about Derek. I just...I haven't been around Scott outside of school, really. It might be weird.”

Allison takes Boyd's advice--“Give him time, Allison”--to heart and decides to just enjoy the fact that they can be friends now without hiding it from Scott or the pack. More will come with time. Or at least that's what she's hoping.

For the next week, she is over at Derek's apartment after school almost everyday, a fact that alternately inspires Lydia being jealous of Allison forming new friendships and Lydia gleefully teasing Allison about her crush on Derek.

Lydia decides that she's in jealousy mode the day Erica approaches their lunch table looking exasperated—an expression that signals she's on delivery duty. No matter how honest she's been with her dad, she's not yet ready to tell him she's been chummy with Derek, and since she's fairly confident he's still checking into her text messages, having the pack relay information has been quite convenient (even if they don't particularly enjoy it).

“Can we help you?” Lydia says.

“Oh, can it, Lydia.” Erica turns towards Allison. “So Derek sent me, like, five texts about checking that you're coming over this afternoon. I'm not supposed to tell you that, but I've decided that if he's going to be that annoying, I have every right to reveal whatever I want.”

“Of course I'm coming. Why wouldn't I-” And then she sees Scott across the cafeteria and remembers. It's Scott's seventeenth birthday party. He'd been so excited about the prospect of her coming when he handed over an invitation, but she'd done her best at giving a non-committal response. “Oh yeah. I—um...”

She realizes she probably should've decided whether or not she was going to Scott's party before the day of said party.

“Forget Derek,” Erica says, a bit more vibrantly. “Just come. We're all going.”

“She has a point,” Lydia adds. “I've even harassed Jackson into going.”

Allison sighs. Derek hasn't said anything about it, but she's noticed him acting extra moody whenever Scott's been mentioned lately—probably because he's the only member of the pack not invited. She doesn't want to just leave him moping around the apartment. Plus, there's also the selfish motivation of knowing that, no matter how much her relationship with Scott has improved recently, this party can only lead to awkwardness.

“I don't know. Tell Derek I'll be over this afternoon, at least for a little. I might just go to Scott's late.”

“Late, huh?” Erica says suggestively. “How late?”

“Not like that, Erica.”

“Good because if you break Derek's heart-”

“You break my...what, my face?” 

“Something like that.” Erica smirks. “See you tonight,” she says, then heads back to the table where she's sitting with Scott, Stiles, Boyd, and Isaac.

Allison sighs once she's gone.

“You shouldn't feel guilty for going,” Lydia says.

“I know that. I just-I don't know. I have a bad feeling.”

“So what if Derek sits around the apartment feeling angsty for a night? How is that much different than most nights?”

Allison glares at Lydia. “It's not just about Derek. I just...I haven't been around Scott outside of school, really. It might be weird.”

“Maybe it'll be a good step forward to you two being friends.”

“Do you think we can ever be just friends?”

Lydia looks over at Scott, then back at Allison. “Not sure, but you might as well try, right? And I'll be right there if you need anything.” She squeezes Allison's arm, and usually Allison would feel reassured by it. Today she just doesn't.

–

At the end of the day, Allison goes to the lot where her car is parked. She was running late and all the good spots were taken, so she's all the way by the lacrosse field. The players are still in the locker room, so the only person she sees is Coach Finstock looking down at a clipboard. She turns towards her car when she sees something—possibly--in her peripheral vision. When she turns back towards the field, she catches a glimpse of black leather disappearing behind a tree.

Derek.

She walks away from her car and towards the woods behind the bleachers. It's so quiet as she ventures further in—she can't even hear any breathing—that she thinks she might've imagined the whole thing. 

“Pull it together, Allison,” she says under her breath. She's about to start towards the parking lot when she sees Lydia waiting by her car, holding the notebook Allison must've left in History class. 

She doesn't really want to deal with Lydia smugly asking, “Who you looking for, Allison?” so she darts behind the nearest tree—right into Derek's shoulder. He laughs and doesn't flinch away from her. She takes a step back.

“I knew it! What are you doing?”

“Watching practice,” he says simply. 

Allison rolls her eyes. “You do know there are bleachers, right?”

“What? Bleachers? Can you point them out for me? I must've been forgetting my glasses all this time.”

Allison crosses her arms. “You don't have to get all braggy about your perfect werewolf vision just to get your sarcastic point across.” 

He laughs. “You sound a little jealous.”

“Jealous? Of what?”

“My perfect werewolf vision.”

“And why would I be jealous of that?”

Derek shrugs, and she tries not to think about how nice his shoulders are.

“I can take you down without werewolf vision or powers so I'm not the least bit jealous,” Allison says. 

He smirks at her in this way that Allison isn't sure how to take, this way that's fond but also makes her feel small and she's not sure whether it should or not. She likes that Derek usually doesn't treat her as someone small, some harmless girl. He knows her for all of her, seeing even the dangerous parts. 

“I don't appreciate that patronizing look. I can, and I wouldn't tempt me if I were you.”

He's chuckling again. “No, I know. I know you could....or at least you'd have a decent shot at it.”

“So why are you looking at me like that?”

“Looking at you like what?”

“Like me thinking I can take you is cute. It's not cute.”

“I think you're reading into things way too much,” he says. His face is serious again, and his gaze is out at the field. Lydia has given up on waiting for Allison and is sitting on the bleachers watching while the team streams onto the field.

Allison stands on her tiptoes so he can't avoid looking at her. “Or I'm reading into things perfectly accurately—unless you have some other explanation.” 

He sighs. “I was just looking at you, Allison.”

But Allison keeps on staring at him.

“Fine,” he grumbles. “Fine. If you really want to know, I thought it was funny. Just...that you're an Argent and we're out here in the woods and you're basically threatening me and I'm not even anxious because-”

“I'm not a threat?” Allison says, peevish. 

All of a sudden, his hand is under her chin, lifting her head just a little. “Because I know you.” 

And she doesn't need werewolf powers to know that he's being sincere, that he wasn't being patronizing like she had assumed, or that there's an implicit, Because you wouldn't hurt me, accompanying his statement. And she doesn't need werewolf powers to be aware of her own pulse speeding up or this desire to melt her body right into his. If everything wasn't so complicated, she would've just grabbed his face and kissed him right then. She would've pushed him against the tree, ran her fingers through his hair, not stopping for anything. But she knows she has to be careful. Even if she thinks he might want to kiss her too. 

She can only get out a sincere whisper. “Yeah, you do.” 

Derek's eyes widen, as if he didn't realize he was touching her, and he drops his hand back to his side. 

“Uh, so, after practice finishes, I'll be back at the apartment if you want to watch that 9031 show or whatever on DVR-”

“90210. Don't pretend you don't know what it's called.”

“I'll pretend that as long as you pretend in front of the pack that you don't watch it.”

Allison blushes. She's not sure why it doesn't bother her that Derek knows she watches it—that he'll actually watch it with her, even if that means he sits there being grumpy and making snarky remarks and pretending he's reading. It reminds her of when she started dating Scott and all those moments when she realized she didn't have to pretend in front of him. 

“There are some things that not everybody needs to know. Anyway, I can come over for a while.”

“You're going to the party, aren't you?” he says in a level tone. 

“I told Lydia I would check it out.” 

He nods. 

“Maybe you should try talking things over with Scott-”

A curt shake of the head. 

“Come on, Derek. It's clearly killing you that you guys can't at least work together. And I think he knows how stupid he was, initially, about us being friends. If you just sit down and-”

“He's too stubborn—or maybe I am, I don't know.” He sighs. “It doesn't matter, Allison. Have fun at the party, okay?” 

She looks over her shoulder at the field. Everyone's engrossed in practice. “Do you want some company as you creep?”

“We're probably already pressing our luck. Scott or Jackson's gonna hear us, if they haven't already.”

Allison grins. “Let them, then. It's not like they don't already know you're always lurking around somewhere. Might as well be upfront about it.” She grabs his hand and starts dragging him out from behind the tree and towards the bleachers. 

He's protesting but allowing himself to be dragged when Lydia's voice rings out: “Allison? Derek?” She is turned completely around on the bleachers, facing Allison and Derek. 

The entire team stops to stare at the pair seemingly frolicking in the forests together--Derek's hand in Allison's. Allison is grateful that she's far enough away not to be able to see the particulars of Scott's expression. 

“Coming!” Allison shouts over to Lydia. “Come on, we might as well sit on the bleachers now that we've been caught.” 

She's looking at Lydia and tugging at Derek's hand when, suddenly, that hand slips away and she turns around and she doesn't see him at all. She's spinning in circles, repeating his name, and it's clear to her that, somehow in a course of a second, he left—or hid himself well enough that he can't be found, even by her. 

Which is infuriating.

Head held high, she struts out of the trees and over to Lydia on the bleachers. The practice has resumed, but she can feel Scott's eyes on her. 

“If you're going for romantic forest meet-ups, you may want to, I don't know, not do them right by the lacrosse field,” Lydia says as she hands Allison her notebook. “Not that I don't appreciate your boldness.” Allison groans, and Lydia slips an arm around her shoulder. “I guess I may have ruined that a little for you, huh?”

“No,” she says bitterly. “Pretty sure Derek's the one ruining it for disappearing into thin air.”

“It really is freaky how he does that.” 

–

Allison doesn't stop by Derek's apartment before the party because she's still frustrated that he thinks disappearing without a single word is an appropriate response to anything. Instead, Lydia and Allison go back to Allison's house and try to determine the best party outfit—one that looks fierce but does not signal that Allison is trying to look impressive for Scott. They pick up Jackson and head over to Scott's—fashionably late at Lydia's insistence.

When they enter Scott's living room, Allison is surprised to see it's actually a fairly packed party, with tons of guys from the lacrosse team and a lot of girls she recognizes from school. The music is blaring, and there are plenty of pairings and potential pairings in various state of hook-up or almost hook-up scattered throughout the room. She notices Danny and Isaac flirting on the couch. Erica and Stiles are making out against the wall, and Allison can't help but think that Stiles looks a bit too frantic, though she guesses Erica likes that. She turns to say something to Lydia, but Lydia has already pulled Jackson out onto the dance floor and they're looking at each other with lovesick expressions.

Allison sighs and think this may not have been the best idea. 

Scott jumps up from a conversation with one of the lacrosse players and walks over.

“Hey Allison, you look—um, you look great.”

“Thanks,” she says. “Happy birthday.”

“Do you want a drink? Beer, soda?”

“I'm good.” Allison bites her lip and tells herself she can handle this. “So, uh, guessing your mom's at a shift?”

“Working all night,” Scott says with a smile.

“I'm kind of surprised.” She puts her hands in the pockets of her dress. “This type of party doesn't really seem like your....type of thing.” 

“Yeah, usually Stiles and I just hang out, but I wanted to invite you. And, you know, everyone.”

Everyone except Derek. But Allison doesn't mention that because that's certainly not the way to avoid the awkwardness. 

“Thanks for inviting me,” she says instead. 

“Thanks for coming,” he replies. 

She is pretty sure they are at a stand-still when he just comes out with it. “Is there anything I can do to make this less weird?”

Allison laughs. “Am I that obvious?”

Scott smiles. “Just to me. Want to join Boyd and I in a board game?” 

“Yeah, actually. That sounds really nice.”

She notices, now, Boyd at a little table in the corner with a beer and a game of Yahtzee in front of him. They pull up another chair, and the three of them play checkers and Yahtzee and Uno until being around Scott feels easy. When Isaac drags Boyd off for counseling on important romantic matters, Scott asks her if he wants to go outside and she says yes, though she thinks she probably shouldn't.

Allison follows Scott into his backyard, and they sit side-by-side in the grass. The sun just set recently, and the moon is visible though it's not dark quite yet. 

“Almost a full moon,” Scott notes. 

She nods. She's aware of these kind of things just as much as any werewolf.

“I'm really glad you came,” Scott says.

“Me too.”

“I've missed you.”

She shakes a little, though it's not that cold. “I miss you too.”

He's facing her now instead of looking up at the sky, but she keeps on looking up. If she looks at that moon intently enough, maybe this will all go away. But nope—everything is still there. Scott is still there, and his hand slides over hers, and she doesn't move away. 

She's waiting for him to do something more. Waiting for him to try and kiss her. Waiting to see how she'll respond because it seems so up in the air right now. She knows she doesn't want to be with Scott, not really, and she knows who it is she really wants to be with, but it's tempting to just go with it because she misses Scott and being kissed by him and having someone be so obviously, unabashedly in love with her. 

Instead he just asks, “Can we talk?” 

Allison sighs with relief. “Yeah, of course.” She slowly moves her hand out from under his.

“Now, I'm just gonna be really blunt about this but...I think we should get back together.”

“I can't, Scott.”

“Why?”

She looks at him now and doesn't know what to say. That she's not in love with him anymore? That she doesn't believe he can ever really understand her—all of her, including the messy bits? That there's Derek now?

“I just can't.” Her voice is soft. She wants to leave.

“Because of Derek?”

“There are a lot of reasons.”

He's looking at the ground when he mutters, “I don't get it. Derek. Derek freaking Hale. Out of everyone in the world.”

“You don't know him,” she responds stiffly.

“If he's helping you get through everything from last year, that's great. I'm really happy for you. And if anyone needs friends in their life, it's him. He's so lucky to have you in his life, he really is. But...come on, Allison. At the end of the day, do you think it's going to be you and Derek falling in love, getting married, having a life together? It's you and me, Allison. We're the ones meant to be together.”

He's whispering at her so desperately, so longingly that she is torn between pity and anger. 

“You don't know that. I can love someone else. I can love anyone I want to love.”

“I know you can...but...but it won't be the same way we were in love.” 

She grabs onto Scott's shoulders and leans in close. “Scott, please just forget whatever soulmate type of thing you think we are. It's naïve, and it's not getting you anywhere, alright?” 

She stands up and turns to go when she hears him mutter, “I'm the naïve one?”

“What is that supposed to mean?” she snaps. 

“I might believe in us, but you believe in you and Derek, and that seems just as naïve to me—to think he'll ever be fixed enough to actually love you.”

“Shut up, Scott.” 

“I'm not saying it to be mean. I just—I'm not getting what's going through your head.” He's sitting there in the dirt, with his arms wrapped around his knees, and to Allison, he looks and sounds so much like a child. “Why do you think he can ever give you the type of love you want or deserve? He's messed up, and it sucks, but you can't fix him, Allison.”

“It's none of your business.”

Scott stands and brushes off his pants. “I'm just worried that you're going to sit around waiting for him.”

She laughs, derisive. “So what you're doing with me basically?” And she doesn't even feel guilty when he looks back at her, wounded. 

“There's a difference,” he insists.

“And that would be?”

“I'm waiting for something possible.” 

She is seriously considering slapping him when this look of realization crosses his face and he starts blabbering. “I'm sorry. I...it's not my business, you're right. I just...I care about you and....I won't bother you anymore, alright? I'll drop it. Consider it completely dropped, okay? I respect you and whatever you want to do, you just do it, because you're brilliant and I—I'm sorry.”

Allison coughs. She feels like she's been punched in the stomach, and her throat feels dry, and she needs to get out of there, away from Scott. “Um, I'm going to go.”

“Can I give you a ride?” 

She shakes her head. “No. I, um—no.”

Then she rushes back through the party, whispers, “I'm leaving,” to a tipsy, dancing Lydia, and then heads out Scott's front door. She slips off her heels and runs most of the way to Derek's apartment. 

–

“Well, that's an interesting look,” Derek says as he opens the door of his apartment. 

Allison is still in her dress from the party, but she's sweaty and her hair, formerly in perfect curls, is disheveled. Her heels are hanging from her right hand. She's still catching her breath when she replies, “I notice when you wear that T-shirt with that black werewolf vomit stain on it so I wouldn't talk if I were you. Can I come in or what?”

He silently gestures to the couch and goes into the kitchen to get her a glass of water. She plops down in front of the television like it's her own home and turns it on. She's ecstatic to see three episodes of 90210 awaiting her. Derek comes and sits besides her, handing her the glass of water.

She smiles and drinks while he starts up the episode. When she sets down her glass, she says, “By the way, I'm still upset by how you took off today.”

“I figured.”

“That was a great apology.”

He shrugs. “It was just easier that way. I didn't want to deal with-”

“What? Human interaction?”

“You understand me so well.”

She rolls her eyes and settles back onto the couch, and neither of them says anything for a while. Allison is watching the show and Derek is reading and pretending he's not watching, though Allison knows she is. 

When he's fast forwarding the commercials, Derek says, “You left the party early.”

“Yup.”

“Pitying me or something else?”

“I don't pity you.”

“Not even some of the time?”

She shakes her head. Pity isn't the right word. When she thinks of pity, she thinks about something you feel for people you don't actually care about for who they are.

“But you're not going to tell me what happened?”

Allison isn't sure how much to say, but she wants to talk to him. She wants to bask in the fact that Derek Hale, who doesn't like interaction all that much, who was once so skeptical of her, is completely open and available to whatever she has to say when he senses something's off.

“Scott thinks we're fated to be together.” 

He pauses the television. “What do you think?”

“That there is no fate. Only choices.” 

He makes a hmm noise that sounds like agreement.

“Do you think that there’s fate?” 

“I think...I'm not the best person to ask about that kind of thing.”

“Which means you don't believe in it.”

“I don't think it really matters. If you don't believe in fate, then it's all about your choices. And if you do believe in fate, it's about resistance or acceptance. It all comes back to you and what you want.”

“I don't want to be with Scott.”

“Then that's really all you need to know,” he answers. She tries to read his expression. It's intense but she can't quite make it mean anything. Is he scared that she's really moved on from Scott? Is he grateful or relieved that she's not interested? She just can't tell, and before she can examine him any further, he's angling himself towards the television again and pressing play.

She thinks about all the things she still needs to know—mostly about him. But then she is calmed by his television, the sound of him flipping pages next to her, the knowledge that his hand is right there, so close to hers, even if she can't reach out and grab it. And this somehow feels more like “fate” than sitting on that lawn with Scott.


	16. Some Pretty Vivid Writing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erica huffs, enters the living room, and sits next to him on the couch. “Sorry if I want to talk through my relationship falling apart.”
> 
> “I mean, you could talk to me,” Allison offers. Erica's hands are already in Allison's hair, braiding it—something she's taken to lately for stress relief. “I know Stiles pretty well, and I'm a bit more....empathetic.”
> 
> “Hey, I'm empathetic!” Derek replies. 
> 
> Erica raises a skeptical eyebrow.
> 
> Allison is surprised by how genuinely offended Derek sounds. “Well,” she says curtly, “you weren't really demonstrating it.”

After the night of Scott's birthday party, Allison decides to take notes on Derek, though she doesn't tell him that. She needs to record all of the little moments that tell her Derek Hale is capable of a romantic relationship—specifically, one with her—or she'll give up hope entirely. 

She always writes in it right when she gets home from the apartment, everything fresh in her mind, though she keeps the tiny, pocket-sized notebook on her always. She can't take any chances about her dad finding it. 

She's thinking about the notebook as she sits cross-legged on his apartment floor, watching Erica and Derek in the kitchen. 

“And then he said--”

“How many ways can I say that I don't care?” Derek says as he leans against the counter. 

“Anyway, and then he said, 'Who even is your favorite Avenger? Captain America?' and I said, 'No, the Hulk is my favorite Avenger. Why would it be Captain America?' and he was all, shrug, 'Captain America is good-looking,' and I said, 'So are you saying I'm shallow and only care about pretty guys?' and he was all, 'I don't know, calm down,' and I said, 'Don't tell me to calm down. Why don't you stop being so condescending?' and then he was like, 'Erica, maybe we should stop for lunch now,' and I was like, 'Do not start acting like I'm grumpy because I'm hungry when I'm grumpy that you're being an ass. What, are you going to ask me if I'm PMS-ing next?' and then he muttered something under his breath and I was like, 'What did you just say?' and he was all, innocent face, 'Nothing.' Yeah, right. I mean, come on. Seriously.” 

She pauses, and relief washes over Derek's face until he realizes it's only for a breath. 

“So, like, by that point I was ready to cut the date short, you know? Because he was being a jerk basically all day, and I had enough of it. So I told him to just take me home. And he, of course, told me I was overreacting, and I was like, 'Uh, you're going to take me home or I'm going to turn into the Hulk,' so he drove me home but gave me the silent treatment almost the whole way and I swear, I almost punched him in the face, like, four different times. And now he keeps calling me and I'm not answering because I'm sick of him. Like, I've had it.” 

She sighs and gulps down some of her coffee. 

“I have no idea what you want me to say right now, Erica,” Derek says.

“I don't know. Offer to go beat him up for me or something.”

“You can do that yourself.” 

Erica pouts. “Well, duh, but you could at least offer. Isn't that what Alphas are supposed to do?”

“I think you have a serious misunderstanding of this whole werewolf thing.” 

Allison smirks as she leans against the sofa and flicks through the channels. Supernatural mayhem? Derek can at least pretend to be in control. But teenage relationship problems? Way in over his head. 

Erica's phone starts playing “Love Story” by Taylor Swift. Allison and Derek exchange amused, somewhat shocked expressions.

“It's my Stiles ring tone,” she says, blushing. “Shut up. Both of you.”

Allison giggles to herself. 

“Well, are you going to answer it?” Derek says.

She holds her head up high. “I don't want to talk to him.” She waits a beat and thrusts the phone towards Derek. “But you wouldn't mind holding onto it, just in case?”

Derek grabs it. “You do know I could just answer it and end this?”

“Don't!” Erica squeals. She reaches for the phone again.

“I wouldn't actually do that,” he says, walks into the living room, and sits on the couch. Allison's trying to hold back a fit of giggles over Taylor Swift blasting from the pocket of Derek's tight jeans. “Now can we talk about anything else?”

Erica huffs, enters the living room, and sits next to him on the couch. “Sorry if I want to talk through my relationship falling apart.”

“I mean, you could talk to me,” Allison offers. Erica's hands are already in Allison's hair, braiding it—something she's taken to lately for stress relief. “I know Stiles pretty well, and I'm a bit more....empathetic.”

“Hey, I'm empathetic!” Derek replies. 

Erica raises a skeptical eyebrow.

Allison is surprised by how genuinely offended Derek sounds. “Well,” she says curtly, “you weren't really demonstrating it.”

“It was a fight about the Avengers!”

“It was a fight that started about the Avengers,” Allison replies.

“Exactly!” Erica exclaims.

“If I'm so un-empathetic, why would Erica even want to talk to me in the first place, huh?”

Both Allison and Derek are looking at Erica who shrugs and says, “Some things I don't even understand. Wolf instincts?”

Derek pouts, looking put-upon, ganged up on. Allison has been hanging out with the pack for about two months now, and Erica and Allison have formed a team when it comes to picking on Derek. Compared to how they get sometimes,she thinks they're being pretty gentle. Really, they're just stating facts.

He grumbles something about sympathy and the Hulk. 

“What's that, Derek?” Allison says .

He clears his throat, glares at her, and says, to Erica, “I'm sorry you and Stiles got in a fight, I really am. I still don't understand what you even see in the guy...but I'm sorry. Fighting sucks. And I hope it gets better. Why don't you talk things out with him?”

“Because I don't want to.” Erica crosses her arms. 

“But that would solve thing so much easier than--!” He sighs, restrains himself. “What do you want to do then?”

“I want to, uh, sit here and braid Allison's hair. And I want you to order us pizza.”

Derek looks at her incredulously. “I ordered the pack pizza yesterday. And two days before that.”

“I mean, you could always not order the pizza and I can start crying about my feelings so if you'd prefer that--”

He rolls his eyes. “Pepperoni?”

“Yes, please.”

He chuckles a little in spite himself and calls the nearest pizza place. 

The three of them watch Mean Girls on TV, and Derek doesn't even complain when Erica quotes all the lines, though he hates when people do that. He keeps his face totally calm when she complains about Stiles and stops her from grabbing her Taylor Swift-ringing phone, though he throws in, “It might actually help to talk to him,” comments every few calls. 

Towards the end of Mean Girls, Erica begins ranting about how her and Stiles just haven't been the same lately and that it's not fair, that he's suddenly so irritating and grating and she can't take him.

Allison hears Derek mutter that she's finally seeing what everyone else has seen Stiles's whole life. She elbows him. Erica is too distressed to notice, eyes rimming with tears.

“What if we break up? I—I don't want to.” 

Allison starts to stand so she can put an arm around her, but before she's even up from her cozy spot on the floor, Derek is squeezing her shoulder and Erica is falling into Derek's chest, crying. His hand moves mechanically up and down on her back. He's trying so hard, Allison can tell, and he's looking up at Allison, half-confused, half seeking her approval that he's doing a good job at this. And he is, he really is doing a good job. 

She's almost jealous, but mostly she's just proud of him. She nods at him, though there's no “Yes or no” question, and he smiles back at her as he says to Erica, “It's going to be okay.”

“If either of you tell anyone about this,” she says between sobs.

“Wouldn't dream of it,” Allison says. She goes around the back of the sofa and puts a comforting hand on Erica's shoulder, her fingers brushing against Derek's. 

That night, she does tell her notebook. She tells it that Derek stuns her on a regular basis, that Derek is a good alpha, more like a good big brother for Erica, and that he has empathy, tons of it, underneath that cold, sarcastic, finely-muscled surface. She tells it that Derek seems desperate for her to know that he can be empathetic and him wanting her to think that must means something. She tells it he's full of so much love and one day she'll experience it in full, one day.

–

Allison is over at Derek's a night the whole pack is there when her phone rings. It's her dad. She shushes everyone and answers.

“Hey Dad, what's up?”

“Allison, you need to get home now.”

“But Dad, I'm just hanging out with Erica and Jackson and-”

“Get home. Now.”

“Are you going to give me any sort of explanation?”

“Now, Allison.”

His tone is threatening, serious, and she wonders what could possibly have gone wrong now. It's not like there are many more people she cares about that can die. A part of her doesn't even want to find out. She'd rather stay with Derek and the pack and never see what's waiting for her, but she knows she'll have to confront the truth eventually. 

“I'm coming, Dad. I'm coming.”

Derek is already on his feet. “Allison, what's wrong?”

“I don't know. He didn't say.” She rushes into the kitchen and grabs her jacket from a chair, checks the pockets for her car keys, and says, “I've got to go.”

“Allison--”

“I'll text Erica later, okay? I'll keep you posted.” 

Then Allison rushes home.

–

Her father tells her that he's been lax lately, that even if he's not training her, safety drills are more important than ever since being a daughter of a hunter still puts her in so much danger. Being the friend of werewolves--even more so. He tells her that he's impressed by how quickly she got home but that she should've pressed him to say something else—something that would prove it wasn't just his voice recorded as a trap for her .

“You need to be vigilant,” he says, from his spot at the dining room table. “You need--”

“Dad, I don't 'need' anything except you to stop. I can't do these mind games! I can't!”

“They aren't games. They're about keeping you alive.”

“Alive with how much psychological damage, huh? How many trust issues? As if I'm not already screwed up enough-”

“Hey-”

“Do you know all the things that were going through my mind as I drove here, Dad? Do you?”

“I can imagine, but Allison--”

“Why don't you think about keeping me safe from you?”

Allison turns around and marches right out the front door of the house, not looking back, not listening to a word her father shouts after her. They've been getting along so well lately. She feels stupid for expecting that it would stay that way. 

She gets right back in her car and drives to Derek's.

–

“Everything alright?” Derek says as he opens the door for her. He looks like he's ready to pounce on something. 

“Just my father being barbaric as usual.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and hopes that nobody can tell she was crying in the car. Because she's looking down, avoiding his eyes, she spots her purse on the ground. “Man, I must have really been in a wreck when I left.” She walks over and grabs it.

“Yeah, especially since you keep that thing basically glued to you,” Isaac says.

Allison tries not to gulp loudly as she puts it on her shoulder. It feels lighter, and she knows right away that the notebook must be missing. One of them has to have it. Derek would be much more awkward if he'd seen it. He'd be hiding away somewhere, not hovering over her like she's a fragile little bird that's gonna explode into a million feathers. That leaves Erica, Isaac, Boyd, and Jackson. 

It's easy to identify the culprit. Jackson is smirking at her from his isolated spot, sitting on the kitchen counter.

All things considered, this might be the best possible result but she still wants to groan.

“Do you need to talk?” Derek asks. 

Allison catches Erica and Isaac giving each other significant 'Derek is so into her' looks. Jackson still grins at Allison. 

“Actually, I think I should be getting home.”

“But you just came back.”

“Um, I know. But I just—you know, need sleep. But I don't think I'm really in—uh, a state to drive.”

“I'll drive you,” Derek replies instantly.

“You can't.” 

Derek blushes like he does every time he forgets who her father is.

“Jackson,” Allison says pointedly, “mind driving me?”

“I'd be delighted.” Jackson practically jumps from his seat. 

Derek glares at Jackson, then Allison. “Allison, is there something else you need to explain?”

“Like what? “ She smiles. “Jealousy not being very attractive on you?”

“I'm not....that's not--” He gives up, grumbling, as he trudges into the kitchen. Meanwhile, Erica laughs hysterically, and Boyd and Isaac try to maintain composure. 

Allison says quick goodbyes to everyone—Derek gives a halfhearted wave of the hand—then rushes out of the apartment, Jackson behind her. As soon as the door is closed, he's laughing in a way Allison would describe as villainous cackling. 

She socks him in the arm. “Shut up!”

But Jackson is still laughing the whole way to the parking lot, as he goes around to the driver's seat, and as he puts on his seat belt. After they start driving and Allison feels confident Derek's not able to listen in, she elbows him in the gut. 

“Ow! Seriously?” he says between fits of laughter.

“Give it to me.”

“Give what to you?”

“You know what!”

“Can you describe it for me?”

She sighs heavily. “A little leather journal. Pocket-sized. Black.”

“And what,” he says, “would be the contents of that journal?”

“None of your business.”

“I mean, I want to be careful not to give you some other girl's journal, so can you, uh, say a few sentences that might be in it? It's in my pocket, but I can compare from memory. It was some pretty vivid writing.”

Allison crosses her arms tightly. “You're a jerk.”

He ignores her. “I have to say, the poetry was a real highlight.”

She's cringing before he even starts reciting it.

“Dark hair, dark car, dark heart, dark heart, dark heart. If you're an abyss, so am I, and I lose myself in the stormy sky of your beautiful eyes, gone red, gone red, gone red,” he says as dramatically as possible.

“I'm going to actually murder you in two seconds if you keep going. This is not the night to mess with me, Jackson. Give the journal back, and don't mention it to anyone ever again, and I won't choke with you a wolfsbane bullet.” 

“Calm down, Allison. I was saying I liked the poem! It's kind of cute—this whole thing you have for Derek.” 

“I'm being serious, Jackson. Keep talking, and I'll kill you.”

“No,” he says, his face a little kinder. “It's like...Beauty and the Beast or something. Someone in falling in love with a monster with bad taste in clothes and even worse social skills and questionable moral choices in his past. It's nice...if you believe in any of that fairy tale, Disney movie type of crap.” 

“I like him, alright? You know that. The pack knows that. But it's not--I'm not—I'm not falling in love with him.”

He raises his eyebrows at that.

“And if I am, it's none of your business, and I don't know what Disney movies you're watching because I would love for things to be that simple. And what were you doing going through my bag anyway?”

“We were playing Hangman. I needed a pen,” Jackson says with a shrug.

Allison rolls her eyes. “Sometimes I really get why people hate you, Jackson.”

“Ouch.” He sighs. “I really didn't mean to make you so upset. I just—it was kind of fascinating, really, once I started reading. It's like a record of all the times when Derek's an actual person.”

“He's an actual person all of the time.”

“You know what I mean.”

Allison shifts in her seat.

“So....,” he says, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, “when do you think you guys are actually gonna get together?”

Allison laughs, a little bitter. “A long, long time from now most likely.”

Jackson hmms thoughtfully.

“What?”

“Is it weird if I hope it's sooner than later?”

“Yes. Why do you care?”

“It's not that I care, Allison. Care isn't the word.”

“Then what is the word?”

“I don't know. I just think...you know, you'd be happy, he'd be happy, it would be...I don't know.”

“You want us to be happy?”

Jackson scowls. “Is that so shocking? Derek Hale can be a person but Jackson Whittemore can't want his friends to be happy?”

“First off, you just called Derek your friend and I'm going to hold that over your head forever, so forget thinking you have an upper hand now because you looked at my notebook. Second, it's a bit shocking that you'd actually admit it.”

“Lydia and I are working on more healthily expressing our emotions,” he says, then groans. “I guess it's actually rubbing off in the rest of my life.” 

By this time, they're driving into Allison's driveway. Jackson decides he'll just wolf-run home. When he gets out of the car, he takes the notebook from his back pocket. She snatches it and holds it closely to her chest. 

“Sorry, I guess,” Jackson says. His hands are in his pockets, and he's looking down at the driveway.

“As you should be.”

He starts to turn around, then looks back at Allison. “I know you weren't there, but you should probably add something about...well, about the way Derek was while you were gone.”

“Huh?”

“When you were gone tonight, after your dad called. Dude was a wreck. I've never seen him that bad without a bullet in him. And there was this look on his face—I mean, I can't explain it but....you know, it's the kind of look that makes me think it wouldn't be so surprising if he had his own Allison notebook, you know what I mean?”

“Um...yeah. I think I do.”

He nods at her awkwardly before he's on the ground, ready to take off in an awkward wolf-run. 

“Thanks, Jackson,” she adds quietly, and in spite of everything, smiles a little as she walks back into the house. 

She adds a paragraph.


	17. The One to Stop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You have movie nights and braid Erica's hair and have them sit with us at lacrosse games and you're making them your life but...you know, you aren't getting that message when it comes time for a pack meeting.”

Allison is the only one who goes to Derek's apartment in the early afternoon. Isaac, Boyd, and Jackson are always at lacrosse practice, and Erica just started rehearsals for the school play. Allison usually just tells her dad she's at Lydia's. 

Though Allison loves hanging out with the pack, the time alone with Derek feels natural. It's how their friendship started after all.

One afternoon, Derek is on the couch, reading, when Allison comes out of the bathroom, arms crossed over her chest.

“What?” Derek says, barely looking up.

“Your bathroom's a mess.” 

He puts down his book. “I know.” 

“You know?”

“I told the pack that I wasn't cleaning up after them anymore.” 

“So you're just going to let it-”

“Be a mess? Yes. They'll start cleaning up after themselves eventually.”

Allison rolls her eyes as she takes her spot at the other end of the couch. It's a manageable distance away from Derek's hotness, and she also likes having the end table next to her for stacking all of her homework. 

“What? You think it's a bad idea?”

“I didn't say that,” Allison says as she grabs her history textbook and a pink highlighter.

They're quiet for a few moments as she finds her page and Derek pretends to keep reading.

“Okay, Allison, this is just obnoxious. Say what you have to say.”

“It's just—it's not going to work. They're going to take you not touching that mess as permissiveness. Face it, it's been long enough that the scared-of-your-authority  
thing is wearing off. And it's definitely not going to get them cleaning up that pig sty of a bathroom.”

“I'm still scary,” Derek protests.

Allison smiles. “Sure you are.”

His eyes flash red at her—challenging—but it doesn't even send a chill up her spine. He turns just enough that he has fangs and his sideburns are extra furry. 

It takes everything in Allison not to laugh. “Are you finished?”

He sighs and the red drains from his eyes.

“And,” she continues, “I just think it's important for your own mental well-being-”

He groans. “Don't start on my mental well-being.”

“After the living situations you've been in, you need the security of somewhere nice and clean. Something grown-up. You deserve it. By letting it get gross to teach the pack a lesson—you're only punishing yourself.”

“Werewolf therapist Allison Argent,” he mutters as he picks up his book again.

“You know I'm right.”

“Yeah, yeah, do your homework,” he says grumpily.

They're both quiet for about ten minutes, both of them reading, when Derek bursts out, “You don't know more about parenting than me!”

Allison giggles. “Parenting?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I'm just imagining you pushing Erica, Boyd, and Isaac in a gigantic triple stroller.”

“I mean—you don't know any more about how to handle the pack than I do.”

“Are you seriously taking what I said as an insult to your Alpha-ness?”

“No,” Derek says. “Though you do always say Alpha like it should have air quotes around it.”

She grabs onto one of his shoulders. “You're a great Alpha. And one day you'll be a great dad.” For a second, they are holding eye contact. Derek's breath seems caught in his throat, and he looks alarmed. Allison quickly adds: “But I still bet that I can have the pack cleaning that bathroom before you can.”

He pulls away and says, sarcastic, “Oh, sure you can.” 

“Come on,” she says. “What are you afraid of? Some competition?” 

“No, I'm afraid of competitive Allison. She's scary.”

She grins. “You know you love it.”

“Keep on telling yourself that.”

“Tell me we have a bet, and I'll leave you alone.” 

Derek sighs. “What does the winner get?”

“Dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“That's how bets usually work, right?” Allison says with a shrug.

Derek looks at her with suspicion. She knows that's because this is some romantic comedy cliché come to life, and she swears to herself that's not why it was the first thing to come to mind. She could've asked for much worse. Like a kiss or naked pictures or “girlfriend,” just the word “girlfriend,” him saying it, whispering it, calling her it in front of the pack. He got off easy. 

“Dinner then. You're on.”

Both turn back to their books. It's just a normal afternoon, though Allison can feel that her usual antsy energy—her usual desire to break out of her skin, break all inhibitions and kiss him—is turned up a few notches. 

-

Allison goes to Lydia's for dinner. It inevitably gets crashed by Jackson. They're discussing the lacrosse season around Lydia's dining room table when Jackson's phone pings with a text message.

“Pack meeting,” Jackson says after glancing at it. “Got to go.”

Lydia groans. “Haven't you had, like, four pack meetings this week?” 

“Yeah, but...you know, it could be an emergency. I'd rather be here, believe me.” Jackson kisses Lydia on the cheek. “I'll be back soon, okay?”

Jackson disappears out the door, and Allison thinks little of it. She goes back to painting her nails with Lydia's silver polish. Lydia sighs and leans back in her kitchen chair. Allison keeps painting her nails. Lydia clears her throat.

“Yes, Lydia?”

“Want to tell me what's going on with Derek demanding all these meetings lately?”

“Doesn't Jackson talk to you about them?”

“Of course he does,” Lydia says stiffly, in a way that alerts Allison to the fact that apparently he doesn't at all. That makes no sense to her. Not after the way Lydia was his rock through all the supernatural stuff the entire summer.

“You don't have to lie to me.” 

“Come on, I'm his girlfriend. I know everything.” Allison stares at Lydia, waiting for the truth. “Just drop it.”

“Why don't you ask him? To tell you about the meetings?”

“You really don't get it, do you? I don't—I can't—it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing that he wouldn't just volunteer it. It's embarrassing that when we get together after a pack meeting, he'll tell me about how much he hates Isaac's hair or Derek's apartment but won't tell me anything that happens. And I'm not going to grovel for scraps of information like you do.”

Allison gapes at her. “You think I grovel?”

“I—no. I think—I think you settle. I just, forget I said anything. So, uh, formal's coming up, huh?”

“Lydia, what do you mean? What do you mean I settle?” Allison presses.

Lydia sighs and scratches at the back of her neck. “I just mean, Allison, that you're over at Derek's every single day. You are there more than Jackson who is actually part of the pack, and you might be there more than Boyd, Isaac, and Erica. You have movie nights and braid Erica's hair and have them sit with us at lacrosse games and you're making them your life but...you know, you aren't getting that message when it comes time for a pack meeting.”

“So what are you saying? That there are things Derek is keeping from me? He talks to me about—about everything. He talks to me more than anyone.”

“At least, that's how it seems when you're there.”

“Lydia-”

Lydia grabs a bottle of nail polish and gets to work on her own nails. “Forget I said anything, alright?”

“Because implying Derek doesn't trust me—so easy to forget.”

“Hey, what do I know, anyway? That's a question to ask yourself: Does he trust you?”

“Of course he does,” Allison replies.

But she knows it sounds as fake as Lydia's response. 

She spends the whole car ride from Lydia's back to Derek's later that evening imagining all the topics that could've been broached at that pack meeting, all the things Derek might not be telling her. She tries to remember Boyd's advice: give him time. 

But that's only a quiet whisper in comparison to Lydia's voice—to the words “grovel” and “settle,” to the idea that she's pouring herself out for him and the pack to only be treated like some hanger-on. 

By the time she's in the apartment parking lot, she's feeling a little shaky. She has to wipe at her eyes a few times to make sure they're dry before she goes inside. 

-

The bathroom is spotless, though nobody else in the pack is at the apartment.

“They just came over for a meeting and left,” Derek explains, as Allison inspects it. “They had a lot of studying to do. But they did it.” 

Allison stares at the bathroom floor, which is so shiny that she can see her curls reflected almost perfectly. “I'm not believing they did this for a second! Where's the photographic evidence?”

“You're kidding, right?”

But she just keeps staring at him, expectantly.

“Uh, I thought you'd believe me.”

“Why would I believe you? This is a bet, Derek! A bet! I need proof!”

“I don't know why you think it's so unbelievable that I could manage a couple of teenagers.”

“Don't say 'a couple of teenagers' all condescendingly like that.” Allison walks further into the bathroom. She runs her hand along the sink, then the side of the tub. Perfect. “I don't know why you think it's all that believable.”

“I don't know, maybe because it happened,” he answers, clearly irritated. 

“And you just expect me to trust you?” Allison snaps.

“Uh, yes.” Derek's hands are in his pockets, and he's looking at Allison, mystified.

Allison is aware that she's making no sense to him. But that doesn't stop her from throwing her hands in the air and yelling, “Well, that's rich!” as she marches out of the bathroom and into the living room. 

Derek follows her. “If it's such a big deal, you don't have to get me dinner.”

“It's not—it's not about that!” She crashes onto the couch with a plunk. “It's just, I show up here and your bathroom is all clean and you expect me to believe, no questions asked, that you...that you did that, I mean, that you didn't do that but that you got the pack to do that...and well, I have no reason to believe that!”

“Allison, are you okay?”

“Trust, just like you trust me, right?”

“Allison,” Derek says gravely. 

“Oh, that's the 'Allison, shut up' voice. I just love that voice.” She's glaring at him now. “Except, oh wait, I actually am messed up enough to still find you attractive when you're using it. But you know what? I'm not going to shut up!”

“I don't have an 'Allison, shut up' voice.” His words come out in a quiet murmur that makes him seem younger than he really is. 

“No, you do. You so do!”

Derek is quiet.

“What?” Allison taps her foot. “You don't have anything to say?”

“I was going to say, 'Calm down, Allison,' but then you'd probably accuse me of using my 'Allison, shut up' voice.” 

“And I'd be right. 

Derek, who is standing, is looking down at her, inquisitive. “You want to give me some clue of what happened in the few hours since you've been here?”

“Nothing happened!” she says. “Except you lying about the bathroom.”

“I didn't lie. I called a pack meeting and then I asked them—well, told them—to clean the bathroom.”

“That's cheating!” 

“How?”

“That wasn't the strategy you thought was going to work. You misled me.”

“Allison,” Derek says softly. “Just tell me what happened.”

She shakes her head. 

“Why don't you think I trust you?”

She sighs. “The texts, Derek. The pack texts.”

“What about them?”

“I'll never get one.”

He smiles just a little. “You do know you're not a werewolf, right? I don't think your dad would be very happy with me if I turned you. Not that I wouldn't, if you asked.” 

“I get it. You won't trust me until you turn me, until I let you be my Alpha?” 

“That's not what I said.” 

“But that's what you meant.”

“That's not what I meant either,” he says, perplexed. “You don't need to be a part of the pack to be important to me. You know that.”

“Well, what does 'important' mean? If it means you like having me around but will never actually tell me anything—”

“I tell you things!” Derek shouts. 

Allison is about to scream back at him, but the words get caught in her throat. She stares at him. He's all sad and defensive, and she knows that he's trying his best, that he does tell her things.

That doesn't change, though, that she wants more. That she's still thinking about that conversation with Lydia. That she doesn't want to settle or grovel. 

So she takes a few moments to sit there and think. 

“So?” Derek says. 

“So what?” 

“Aren't you going to say something back?”

“I thought you'd be happy that I shut up.”

He sighs and rolls his eyes. “I'm never happy when you shut up.”

“Oh yeah, sure.”

Derek grabs Allison by the hands, and she lets him yank her off the couch. They're standing, hand-in-hand, with Derek looking pointedly into her eyes. She hardly returns his gaze. 

“I don't want to say the 'trust' word because I don't know if you're going to freak out, but trust me about that. It's true.” 

Allison looks into his eyes. She wants to say, “Tell me what we are,” better yet, “Tell me you want me,” but she already feels too vulnerable. Instead she says, “Well then, I could always talk more about your bathroom,” with a slight smirk. 

“Um, yeah, anything but that, please.”

He laughs, and she can't stop herself from laughing too. Her hands are still in his hands, and that tense conversation from a few seconds ago seems like it's completely in the past. She's about to move back towards the couch when Derek's thumb runs across her cheek. 

Allison can practically read the “Should I?” on his face. She wonders if he can see the big Yes on hers. In case it isn't already clear enough, she tugs on the hand she's still holding. To her surprise, he steps towards her. 

She thinks that he'll take a few more seconds to think it through and inevitably decide to back away , but she doesn't even have time to imagine it fully before both of his hands are cupping her face and his mouth comes down on hers, hard. It almost feels like he wants to suck her soul right out or something—like he's some sort of sexy vacuum. But she doesn't want him to be softer or to calm down or get his tongue back in his own mouth. She's not sure this is even real, so she's going to take it, quickly, passionately--just as aggressively as he is. 

Her hands are everywhere, first in his hair, then on his arms, and it reminds her, just for a second, of those times in her bedroom when she and Scott were together, knowing her parents could come home and cut thing short any second.

But nobody is going to come bursting in. The betas are all gone. Time is not going to run out. Allison knows the only thing that can stop them is themselves. And she's certainly not going to be the one to stop.

They stumble onto the couch without disentangling from each other. Derek's lips slip from her lips to Allion's jaw line. She lets herself rest a little—leans back and just lets herself experience the perfect pressure of his lips making their way down her neck.

Then it stops.

He's in the same position, leaning into her, nuzzled into her neck, lips against her skin, but he's not doing anything. He's frozen.

She kisses the top of his head. “What, you getting tired?”

But he doesn't say anything. He doesn't move at all.

She pokes his back. “Derek. Earth to Derek. You alive?” No response. “Derek.” 

Allison grabs his face and angles it upward. His mouth is slack, and his eyes are all watery in a way she hasn't seen since that conversation about Kate over the summer. 

“Derek, what's wrong?”

He jerks his head backwards, and Allison's hands fall into her lap.

“Tell me,” she says. She rests her hand on top of his leg, and he looks down at it. She almost thinks he's going to flinch, but instead he squeezes it. “You didn't do anything wrong, okay? We didn't do anything wrong.”

He finally manages to get out her name: “Allison.”

“Please, please don't do what I think you're about to do. It's okay, alright? We're okay. This is okay. What we're doing...” 

“What we did.”

“No.” She shakes her head. “No. Doing.”

“I shouldn't have. You're seventeen.”

“Who cares?”

“Me.”

“Don't lie to me. This isn't because I'm seventeen.” She can feel her own tears starting to well up. “It's because I'm Allison Argent.”

“It's because I shouldn't have done it. I'm sorry, Allison, that I led-”

“Led me on? I can't believe it. You're so full of shit right now.” Derek looks stunned to hear her swearing, which would be very satisfying if it weren't for the circumstances.  
“I know you, Derek. And I know what you wanted during that kiss wasn't some random hook-up. It was me.” 

Derek is staring at his lap. “Allison, I'm sorry.” 

“Would you just stop?” she screams. “I'm not going to accept an apology for you kissing me! I'm not going to do that!”

“Then accept my apology for what's happening right now.”

“And what's that? What's happening now?” 

“I'm asking you to leave.” 

Allison wants to be stubborn and just stay on that couch with him until he takes this whole conversation back, until he takes her into his arms, until he's kissing her again. But she knows he's serious. 

She stands up and takes a deep breath. “Forever?”

“No, of course not.”

Allison wants to be more skeptical, but she does believe him. He wouldn't know what to do without her at this point, anyway. She sighs and walks over to the door of his apartment.

“You know, Derek, I think when you look back on this, you're going to regret this moment much more than when you kissed me.”

Derek's only response is this sad, little defeated groan, and Allison feels bad for him, though that's not what she wants to feel. She wishes she couldn't understand why he's be freaking out so badly, that she could have no sympathy, that all she could feel was anger. 

But it's Derek. And when it comes to him, her feelings don't work like that.

She walks out the door. As soon as it's closed behind her, the tears start. She sniffles all the way to her car, hating herself for crying, once again, over a guy. She wishes the thought of him trying to keep tears at bay was any sort of compensation, but it just makes everything worse.


	18. Mixed Signals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Did you like it? Kissing me?” she asks. A question that could come across as insecure from anyone else, but is only fierce, bordering on vicious, coming from Allison.
> 
> “That's a stupid question."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it's been like a million years since I've updated. Sorry, everyone! Really hoping to actually finish this.

For a few days, it feels like a break-up, even though they weren't dating. The pack keeps asking her why she's not coming over to Derek's apartment, and she keeps replying with shrugs and lame excuses about homework. When she sees Derek, once, in the school parking lot, waiting to pick up Erica, she pointedly walks past his car without so much as looking at him.

She knows, however, that neither of them can take this much longer and isn't surprised to see him outside her window when her father isn't home. She thinks about continuing to read The Awakening and pretending she doesn't hear him knocking. Then she sees the flowers, and her curiosity gets the best of her.

Allison opens the window. “What do you want?”

“Can I come in?” 

“If you give me a convincing reason.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “I want to talk.”

Allison wants to keep on being a jerk to him but she knows that's immature. She shouldn't torture him just because she feels rejected. Instead, she sighs, says, “Okay,” and sits on her bed. He enters, still holding this bouquet of daisies. Normally he would sit down next to her, but he—wisely, Allison thinks—stays standing. 

“These are for you.”

She doesn't extend a hand to grab them. “I thought you were sending me mixed signals before, but you're really taking it to a whole new level right now.”

He laughs a little bitterly. “I told Erica they were a bad touch. I just—I want to make things better between us, and I want to take you to dinner. We were supposed to get dinner out of that whole bet thing, right? And you didn't believe I actually won anyway, so.... Anyway, I want to make things up to you after how much I screwed them up the other night.”

“Again, I'm going to need some clarification. What do you mean by screwing up? Do you mean kissing me?”

“Just...for how I handled the situation,” he answers.

Allison looks at him. He seems so helpless, and because it's Derek, because she cares so much about him, she wants to be sympathetic. But she can't be. She just feels tired. Does he want her or not? Or...more accurately, will he ever accept the fact that he wants her? Those are the things she needs to hear—not some lame apology.

“Did you like it? Kissing me?” she asks. A question that could come across as insecure from anyone else, but is only fierce, bordering on vicious, coming from Allison

“That's a stupid question." 

“No, it's not. Just answer me, and I”ll take those flowers and we can go back to being....whatever. That's all I want to know, Derek. Did you like it? Just tell me.”

“I can't just tell you. I don't know why you don't understand.”

“I'm so sick of being understanding!” Allison screams. “All the freaking time with you. I get it. I get that you have traumas in your past, and I get that they involve my family and I get that you need time to heal from a lot of things. But newsflash, so do I. You said you wanted to talk, so talk.”

“I wanted to talk about how I need you back in my life.” He gulps. “You're my best friend.”

Her heart flutters, just a little bit, at the words “best friend,” and she can tell by the way his voice softened over them that they mean a lot to him too. But right now, it's not quite enough. 

“That's great and all but doesn't answer my question.”

He shakes his head. “Sometimes you really do act your age, Allison.”

“Give me a break, Derek. Like you're not in a perpetual state of adolescence.”

Derek takes a deep breath, which Allison can tell is him trying to calm down, before he says, “Take the damn flowers.” He holds them out to Allison, and, again, she makes no effort to reach towards them, though a part of her wants to in order to make peace. He drops them on the ground and, grumbling, climbs out her window.

Allison slams it shut, locks it, and then throws herself onto her bed, where she screams repeatedly into her body pillow until she falls asleep. 

–

When she wakes up, there is a note on her pillow. She reaches over, grabs it, and reads: Of course I liked kissing you. I liked it a lot, alright? I think you knew that. Meet me where our friendship first started. 

Allison looks around her empty room. “Derek?” she says aloud.

No response.

She's livid that he'd dare break into her room, especially while she was in there sleeping, and a part of her wants to destroy him for it. Another part of her is comforted by having this written proof of what she's known all along, proof that he can admit it. That has to be the first step to something promising, right?

Allison drives over to the mall, already closed, and just like old times, finds him there at the fountain. He's grinning when he sees her, clearly over that anger he had when he left. A lot can happen over the course of a four hour nap.

“I wouldn't be looking so happy if I were you. If you ever break into my bedroom again, I'm going to break all your teeth. You are not Edward Cullen, and I am not into that. At all."

He raises his hands in surrender. “Yes, ma'am.”

“So,” Allison says, sitting next to him. “You liked it.” He rolls his eyes before looking away completely. She grabs him by the face and makes him look at her. “You can't hide from this that easily. I have it in writing.” 

Derek goes to brush her hand off his face but ends up just resting a hand over hers. “After I left, I realized you were right. You have the right to know. I...I know that you like me. Like that. And you know—well—I, you know.” He realizes his hand is still on hers and drops it into his lap. “And spending so much time with you lately, and you spending time with the pack—all of it has been great. I....I didn't think things could be this great. But that's why it's so important to me that I don't screw things up.”

“You weren't screwing things up. You wouldn't be—”

“If I did anything right now, I would be, Allison. Right now, you really are too young for me. I wasn't lying about that. And I'm just not ready yet. You deserve someone who's ready. ”

“So what do you want me to do?”

She remembers what Scott said—about her just waiting around for Derek. And she is not sure whether or not she wants to be that girl.

“That's up to you. I can only tell you the truth. Which is that I can't be with you right now, not like that, but I want to be. And I think—one day, the right day—we really could be something....something really good. But Allison, you could be something really good with, well, a lot of people. And if you want to be something really good with someone who can you give that right now, I get that.”

Again, she thinks about Scott. Sure, she probably could get back together with him. But right now, sitting here with Derek, no part of her wants to at all. She wants this. She wants Derek. She wants it even if it means waiting because some things are really worth the wait, right? (Though she's not sure how much other people would think that adage applies to the affection of emotionally damaged Alpha werewolves).

“I want the same thing you want,” she replies. “I can wait.”

Allison has never seen Derek smile as wide as he does then, wrapping his arms around her in this long hug, and she wonders just exactly how Derek thinks this waiting thing is going to play out—especially with both of them knowing what the other feels. It would be so easy to fall into being more. Are they going to have to be cautious? Put up boundaries? Or can they basically just be in a relationship without the labels (and maybe unfortunately the kissing)? She pushes those thoughts aside, though, and lets herself enjoy the moment and the feeling of his arms.

When he lets go, she asks why he brought her back here of all places. Now that they weren't hiding from his pack, he easily could've asked her to meet at the apartment.

“It's the place where I first started feeling like I could be honest with you,” he replies simply. “I was hoping it would help me tonight.”

“It looks like it did,” she says with a smirk.

–

She calls Lydia when she gets home, and Lydia promptly tells her that she's an idiot for going along with Derek's crap.

“Did he give you a timeline at least?” she snaps. “About when he's going to be magically ready?”

“Well, no.”

“So, like, legitimately, it could be fifty years from now.”

“It won't be fifty years from now.”

“The emotional damage he has to sort through, it could probably be a century from now. Your corpses could get married. I'm sure that would be a real cute ceremony.”

“Lydia!”

“You know I'm being honest. This isn't progress for the two of you. It's the opposite.”

“He admitted he wanted to be with me.”

“Oh, big whoop! There are a million guys in the world who want to be with you, Allison—and most of them aren't going to make you wait.”

“But this is Derek,” she says, as if that explains it. 

Lydia continues ranting about how Allison is going to end up throwing away years of her romantic future for an emotionally stunted wolf man (which, of course, Allison finds a tad hypocritical) and how Allison is totally ignoring the fact that she's a maturing, sexual woman who has bodily needs. “You're going to need someone to make out with in the mean time. At the very least!” Lydia exclaims, and starts rattling off possibilities. “I would even volunteer. Jackson would understand.”

Allison laughs. “I'm good, Lydia. Really, I am.”

“You're sure of that?”

“Positive.”

“Okay, well, we'll talk tomorrow, I guess. And we'll see you if you're so positive then.” Lydia makes a hmph noise and hangs up. 

Allison gets ready for bed and tries not to think about how she might not feel so positive tomorrow—or the many tomorrows to come after that. She sighs. Lydia was right. It would be really useful to know how many tomorrows to expect.


End file.
